Chapter 12 Formative Assessment - Deadline 13/12/24

The formative assessment is essentially a stripped down version of what will be asked for in the summative assessment task. Both formative and summative task will be marked similarly, so this is a fantastic opportunity to get feedback on this section of the Skills modules. There are essentially two tasks for the formative.

12.1 Task 1 - Figure and Figure Legend

Download one of your .pdf box plots or scatter plots from posit Cloud, it doesn’t matter which one but it does need to be presented well. Plot selection and presentation will be assessed. Use the tips and tricks that we covered in Chapters 9, 10 and 11. You can download your files from posit Cloud onto your local device by moving to your figures folder, ticking the box next to the file you wish to download and then clicking on More and then Export. You will then be given the option to Download your files. Once you have your figure of choice downloaded you can copy it into a Word file and write a suitable figure legend.

Remember my top tips for writing an appropriate figure legend (as covered in lectures);

Legends should;

• Allow the reader to understand the figure without reference to the text, so include information about what is being shown. For example, with a box plot you may wish to say “The middle line, box and whiskers represent the median, interquartile range and range, respectively.”
• Include info on sample size, study organism (in Latin) and (if relevant, e.g. ecology) study location and time

Legends should NOT;

• Include information that is obvious to a scientific audience (e.g. “a scatter plot to show” or “a graph to show”)
• Repeat what’s in the figure (e.g. describe what the colour mean if you also have a key in the figure)

12.2 Task 2 - Script

Hopefully you have been keeping your script nice and clean and tidy throughout your tribolium_parasites analysis and have it saved nicely in your scripts folder. If you have then this step will be super easy! You simply need to download your script using the same method described above in Chapter 12.1.

12.3 Task 3 - Submission

If you go to the Formative assessment folder of the BIO-4008Y or BIO-4602Y you will find a submission point, you will need to upload both your figure with figure legend document along with your script document.

Top tip - I will release a marking rubric to you respective blackboard page so that you can see the criteria underwhich these asignments are assessed.

The deadline for formative submissions is the 13/12/24, I will mark all submissions submitted by this date over the Christmas break.