Undergraduate Geoscience 2024-2025

This course leads students toward the application of programming to particular problems in the Geosciences. Starting from basic principles of programming and moving towards specific focused solutions.

This course provides the opportunity to carry out an independent, open-ended, piece of research work. This will be in an area of geoscience (geology, physical geography, archaeology) or in related subjects where a wide range of tools commonly used by geoscientists can be utilized. The project can use data that was collected during fieldwork during the preceding summer; it can be a laboratory-based study using materials already available; it can be a ‘desktop’ study utilizing digital information or any combination of these approaches. The student will be expected to develop: presentation skills; experience of reading and thinking about a specialist topic in depth; critical analysis skills of your own and other people’s scientific work and project management skills. This will help prepare for future careers beyond university. It is anticipated that this course will form the background for Geoscience Project B.

The aim of this course is to develop critical thinking, presentation and project design skills for research together with an enhancement of the necessary skills in numeracy, data manipulation and data interpretation. The course involves substantial workshop-based and student-led practical work designed to provide direct experience of these key components. Students will be introduced to the practical and theoretical aspects of various analytical techniques that are available in the School of Geosciences.

This course provides an opportunity to develop further an aspect or aspects of findings identified in the Geoscience Project A, or to produce a piece of independent and original research on an approved topic.  Advanced level knowledge of a sub-area of the geosciences will be developed through independent study supervised by a member of academic staff.