LQB286 Quantitative Skills for Health Scientists

Unit Outline: Semester 2 2024, Gardens Point, Internal

Overview

Quantitative Skills for Health Scientists develops key numerical literacy, practical and quantitative skills which are required for practicing biomedical and/or medical laboratory scientists. The unit provides opportunities to apply these skills through collaborative work, development of teamwork skills, effective interpersonal skills and scientific communication. This unit is designed to expand students' knowledge of important skills and competencies, including studies in quantitative data analysis and biostatistics that provide a strong foundation for continuing studies in the broad range of biomedical disciplines and related health areas.

Learning Outcomes

On successful completion of this unit you will be able to:

1. Demonstrate the competencies and skills required for working collaboratively to communicate numerical/quantitative or biomedical data in spoken, written and online/digital contexts relevant to biomedical science.
2. Develop and apply basic skills in experimental design, measurements, data analysis and interpretation, and principles of biostatistics in biomedical science.
3. Identify, apply and justify appropriate quantitative methods to analyse quantitative data and solve quantitative problems in a range of contexts, using appropriate software where required.
4. Demonstrate competencies in a range of biostatistics methods to analyse a range of data including the construction and interpretion of graphs and tables that represent statistical data.

Content

Learning Approaches

Blended learning approaches will be employed to integrate teaching and learning through tutorials and workshops, peer-group activities and online resources. The teaching team will consist of a range of experienced biomedical scientists with support from biostatisticians.

Feedback on Learning and Assessment

You will receive team and/or individual feedback on your assignments and assessment items either through Canvas, marking rubrics or during formal teaching sessions and workshops. Formative activities will be conducted in the weekly workshops and will provide additional opportunities for feedback from the teaching staff.

Assessment

Overview

There will be a range of assessment items in this unit which will be designed to develop your understanding of mathematics, statistics and data analytics.

Unit Grading Scheme

7- point scale

Assessment Tasks

Assessment: Problem Solving Task

Series of Problem Solving Tasks that will assess your understanding of working with quantitative data for biomedical problem solving or statistical analysis of datasets. These will demonstrate your competence in scientific communication of numerical data, hypothesis testing and making meaningful interpretations of biomedical data.

Assessment: Examination

This examination will assess your knowledge, use and understanding numbers, measurements, units of measure and use of equations in biomedical sciences. This numerical literacy underpins the practice and communication of biomedical data.

Assessment: Examination

Academic Integrity

Students are expected to engage in learning and assessment at QUT with honesty, transparency and fairness. Maintaining academic integrity means upholding these principles and demonstrating valuable professional capabilities based on ethical foundations.

Failure to maintain academic integrity can take many forms. It includes cheating in examinations, plagiarism, self-plagiarism, collusion, and submitting an assessment item completed by another person (e.g. contract cheating). It can also include providing your assessment to another entity, such as to a person or website.

You are encouraged to make use of QUT’s learning support services, resources and tools to assure the academic integrity of your assessment. This includes the use of text matching software that may be available to assist with self-assessing your academic integrity as part of the assessment submission process.

Further details of QUT’s approach to academic integrity are outlined in the Academic integrity policy and the Student Code of Conduct. Breaching QUT’s Academic integrity policy is regarded as student misconduct and can lead to the imposition of penalties ranging from a grade reduction to exclusion from QUT.

Resources

Risk Assessment Statement

There are no out-of-the-ordinary risks associated with this unit.

Course Learning Outcomes

LS40 Bachelor of Biomedical Science

1. Critically review, analyse and synthesise foundational knowledge in a broad range of biomedical discipline areas and in depth theoretical, technical and practical knowledge in specialised discipline areas.
   Relates to: Problem Solving Task, Examination, Examination
2. Demonstrate the technical skills required to solve multi-disciplinary problems in biomedical research, industry and clinical settings and do so in an ethical, safe and responsible manner.
   Relates to: Problem Solving Task
3. Demonstrate the cognitive skills required to find solutions to scientific problems.
   Relates to: Problem Solving Task, Examination
4. Contribute effectively to biomedical projects, either as an individual or as a member of a team, by demonstrating professional behaviour and participating in continuous learning.
   Relates to: Examination
5. Apply knowledge and skills to rapidly source, critically analyse and communicate biomedical science information using appropriate technologies.
   Relates to: Examination

LS47 Bachelor of Medical Laboratory Science

1. Discipline Knowledge
   Relates to: Problem Solving Task, Examination, Examination
2. Analysis and interpretation of data
   Relates to: Problem Solving Task, Examination, Examination
3. Synthesis, judgement, and explanation
   Relates to: Problem Solving Task, Examination, Examination
4. Scientific communication skills including information literacy and numeracy
   Relates to: Problem Solving Task