The Scientific Side of Education

5 August 2026

For decades university education has been stereotyped as being long lectures where students sit in silence and take notes, followed by sitting in silence to answer exam questions. However, education in SBBS is different from this, incorporating practical sessions in the lab and computer rooms, peer-led team learning (PLTL), field trips, interactive lectures and more.

But how do we know which education approach works and why?

Scholarship aims to answer this question by using scientific-based enquiry to: understand how students learn, evaluate student outcomes with differing teaching practices, understand how students experience their time at university, and use evidence to improve student outcomes and education quality.

In SBBS, our scholarship activities bring together innovation, novel pedagogic research, and implementation of effective teaching practices. Our lively community of educators, researchers and learners collaborate in three key areas to improve education and students’ experience at university. Within the Excellence in Teaching & Assessment theme we’re focusing on how we can best facilitate student’s learning, and structure assessments, to allow them to demonstrate the skills and knowledge they have developed in an ever-changing environment.

At the forefront of our work are projects aimed at developing:

• Learning spaces that combine community and peer-learning to enhance student experience and support;
• Guidance and toolkits to ensure that group- and teamwork is effectively and identifiably incorporated as an employability skill;
• Authentic, contextualised assessments that provide students with relatable, career relevant opportunities to apply what they’ve learned.

The Skills Development theme explores how transferrable skills can be made more visible, meaningful, and embedded within students’ disciplinary learning. Across our programmes, students develop a wide range of capabilities that are central to both academic success and future employment. Our work focuses on how we can help students recognise these skills, practice them intentionally, and articulate their value beyond university context.

Current areas of interest include:

• Mapping how key graduate attributes, particularly critical evaluation and AI literacy, are developed across programmes and levels of study;
• Identifying examples of effective practice where skills are explicitly taught, applied, or assessed within disciplinary context;
• Developing practical resources and toolkits to support colleagues in embedding skills development in ways that are scaffolded, contextualised, and relevant to students’ future pathways.

We’re in a time where students’ capacity to confidently demonstrate a transferable, employment-viable skillset is more important than ever. By bringing these areas of innovation together, we look to help ensure not only that our students are aware of the skills they’re developing but that they have experience applying and adapting them across a range of environments.

The Student Flourishing theme explores how we can create education environments that give students the freedom to achieve their best work. Across the country increasing numbers of university students are neurodiverse and/or disabled: SBBS staff are dedicated to ensuring these students receive the scaffolding and support they need to work with their diversity and achieve both within their studies and after graduation.

Other staff are researching the factors that help students to feel as though they ‘belong’ at Queen Mary – the feeling that they are accepted, valued and supported by their peers and by staff. We know that when students feel that they belong then they have better emotional well-being and greater academic success. One route to enhancing emotional well-being is practicing mindfulness, which is the awareness of where you are and what you’re doing, without judgement. We are implementing and evaluating mindfulness activities such as guided walks in the local park, to support students’ well-being.

Together the scholarship conducted by SBBS academics in partnership with our students, explores and investigates multiple facets of students’ experiences, learning and attainment. The scholarship findings are informing decisions around how best to teach and support students to set them up for a lifetime of success.

Dr Jayne Dennis
Reader in Biomedical Education, Director of Scholarship