Dr Jayne Dennis

Undergraduate Teaching

My pedagogic approach for teaching human genetics and genomics emphasises interactive and student-centred learning. I use scenarios to foster critical thinking and problem-solving skills among learners. Student feedback on my teaching is consistently excellent:

“Jayne Dennis [is] a fantastic and enthusiastic teacher who cares about her students' success and was therefore a big motivating factor in my choosing this module.”

“Jayne is an amazingly strong woman and lecturer and I admire her way of teaching, empowerment of women roles in society, and I look up to be like her because of how good she is at what she's doing.”

I organise and teach on four modules: Human Genetic Disorders (BIO227), Advanced Human Genetic Disorders (BIO324) and two final year research project modules (BIO600 and BMD600). I supervise final year projects in education research. I am a tutor on the first year Essential Skills module (BMD100), Advisor to Biomedical Sciences students, and Senior Tutor to the Medical Genetics programme.

I have been an Advance HE Senior Fellow since 2017 and I regularly review applications for Associate through to Senior Fellow.

Previous education leadership in SBBS:

· 2019-2023: Director of Teaching and Learning for Biomedical Sciences, Neuroscience and Pharmacology & Innovative Therapeutics; Programme Director for Biomedical Sciences

· 2016-2018: Director of Student Experience

· 2014-2016: Responsible for the undergraduate Ciência sem Fronteiras scholarship programme

Previously I taught at St George’s, University of London (SGUL), where I obtained my Postgraduate Certificate in Biomedical & Healthcare Education. I continue teaching at City St George’s as a visiting lecturer on the Cancer Biology module.

Research

Research Interests:

I am currently the Director of Scholarship in SBBS. In this role I have created a vibrant community of scholarship practice in the School and I mentor >30 academics in Teaching and Scholarship roles.

My own pedagogic research focuses on metacognition in higher education, especially the teaching practices used by staff to support students’ metacognitive development, such as peer assessment and small group learning. I use mixed methods approaches to investigate students’ experience with, and outcomes from, these teaching practices. I have presented my work at the annual conference of the Society for Research in Higher Education (2024, 2021, 2018), Advance HE conferences (2026, 2020), and I have been an invited speaker at several UK universities.

I review pedagogical manuscripts for several journals plus conference abstracts for the Society for Research in Higher Education, of which I am also a member.

Previously I was a Queen Mary Academy Fellow, identifying best practice in scholarship.

I completed an MA in the psychology of education at the world leading Institute of Education, which is now part of University College London.

My scientific research focused on the use of molecular and genetic information in the clinical management of disease, especially cancer. My PhD (University of Glasgow) investigated gene expression profiles in the classification of primary cancers. This work formed the basis of a diagnostic algorithm for Carcinoma of Unknown Primary which was evaluated in a Cancer Research UK sponsored clinical trial (CUP-ONE, CRUK/08/006).

Following my post-doc at Imperial College London I held senior positions in two genomics facilities.

Publications

Selected Publications:

Dennis JL (2025) “I need to learn how to cite without the website”: using think alouds to understand students’ struggles with academic referencing. Emerging Topics in Life Sciences. 9(3):ETLS20253027

Dennis JL & Somerville MP (2023) Supporting thinking about thinking: Examining the metacognition theory-practice gap in higher education. Higher Education. 86:99-117

Oien KA & Dennis JL (2012) Diagnostic work-up of carcinoma of unknown primary: from immunohistochemistry to molecular profiling. Ann Oncol 23 suppl 10: x271-277

Tomlinson C, Thimma M, Alexandrakis S, Castillo T, Dennis JL, Brooks A, Bradley T, Turnbull C, Blaveri E, Barton G, Chiba N, Maratou K, Soutter P, Aitman T & Game L. (2008) MiMiR: an integrated platform for microarray data sharing, mining and analysis. BMC Bioinformatics 9:379

Oien KA, Dennis JL, Evans TRJ (2007) Metastatic adenocarcinoma of unknown origin. In Progress in Pathology 7 (editors N. Kirkham & N. Shepherd), Cambridge University Press, pp 135-162

Dennis JL & Oien KA. (2005) Hunting the primary: novel strategies for defining the origin of tumours J Pathol 205:236-47

Dennis JL, Hvidsten TR, Wit EC, Komorowski J, Bell AK, Downie I, Mooney J, Verbeke C, Bellamy C, Keith WN & Oien KA. (2005) Markers of adenocarcinoma characteristic of the site of origin: development of a diagnostic algorithm. Clin Cancer Res 11:3766-72

Dennis JL, Westra J, Bell A, Montgomery K & Oien K. (2003) The type and quality of paraffin wax is important when constructing tissue microarrays (TMAs) Mol Pathol 56:306

Dennis JL, Vass JK, Wit EC, Keith WN & Oien KA. (2002) Identification from public data of molecular markers of adenocarcinoma characteristic of the site of origin Cancer Res. 62:5999-6005

Griffiths RA, Schley L, Sharp PE, Dennis JL & Román A (1998) Behavioural responses of Mallorcan midwife toad tadpoles to natural and unnatural snake predators. Anim Behav 55(1): 2-7-14