Embedding uniform research internships in the Bachelor’s curriculum of Biomedical Sciences
Purpose
When designing a new curriculum for the Bachelor of Biomedical Sciences, the Faculty Board ordered that the research traineeship be shortened from 4 months full-time (24 EC) to 3 months full-time (18 EC).
Results
A choice was made to retain 24 EC of effective research internship by preceding the actual full-time internship (Bachelor Thesis – part 2) with a ‘internship-preparatory course’ (Bachelor Thesis – part 1), with a common component, belonging to the academic core (research skills and Scientific Writing in English) but content focused on each student’s individual internship project.
Besides preserving a relatively long research period, this project also achieved the goal of making the large number of internships more logistically manageable. There is a lot of competition among students due to limited availability of internship projects in semester 2. By offering the bachelor thesis courses twice a year, the aim is to take the pressure off the research groups offering the internship projects and to improve the throughput of students with a study delay or a second study (often Medicine).
Tags
dr. M.P. Bergman, mathijs.bergman@vu.nl, Amsterdam University College, 2017, SKO