Review, revise, submit

Research Methods — Week 10 Application

The final session

Three phases

Phase	Time	What
Finalise draft	20 min	Last edits, commit by minute 30
Peer review	40 min	Read, evaluate, file Issues
Debrief and revise	30 min	Discuss, reflect, final edits

• [10 min] Orientation. Every student should have a near-complete draft. If not, the first 20 minutes are their last chance.

Questions?

Submit questions anonymously:

PollEv.com/geol

text geol to 07480 781235

• Open the Poll Everywhere Q&A activity before the session and leave it active throughout.
• Questions appear in your Poll Everywhere presenter view; upvoted questions rise to the top.
• Address during transitions or at the end of concept blocks, not mid-explanation.
• Reset (archive) the activity between sessions so questions don’t carry over from the previous week.

Phase 1: Finalise

✏️ 20 minutes

Last edits

Make final changes. Commit and push.

Hard deadline: whatever is committed at minute 30 gets reviewed.

• [20 min] Students write. Circulate for quick questions.

Phase 2: Peer review

✏️ 40 minutes

Assignments

Each student reviews one report from a different project group.

Navigate to your assigned repo on GitHub.

• [5 min setup] Hand out assignments.

Review checklist

File 3–4 GitHub Issues:

Summary and clarity

• Clear finding and recommendation in the summary
• Logical flow: question → method → result → conclusion
• Accessible to a non-specialist

Evidence and analysis

• Appropriate statistical tests
• Assumptions checked and documented
• Effect sizes or CIs reported
• Figures clearly labelled and referenced

• Show the full checklist — it’s in the exercise page and the GitHub Issue template.

Review checklist (continued)

Uncertainty and limitations

• Acknowledges what the analysis cannot tell us
• Discusses confounders and assumptions
• Conclusion matches evidence (no overstatement)

Reproducibility

• Methods clear enough to reproduce
• Code committed and runs

And finally:

One thing done well.

One thing to improve.

• [40 min] Students read and review. This is quiet, focused work. Circulate to check Issue quality.

Phase 3: Debrief

💬 Discussion and revision

What did you notice?

What patterns did you see across the reports you reviewed?

Any recurring issues?

What was the best thing you saw?

• [15 min] Compare to Week 4: are reviews more sophisticated? They should be — students now have vocabulary for assumptions, effect sizes, confounders, base rates.

Revision time

Read your reviews. Make final revisions.

Commit your updated report.

• [15 min] Students read their Issues and revise. Final commit.

Course wrap-up

Where you started

Week 1: “Is UK biomass electricity carbon-neutral?”

You didn’t know how to answer that.

Where you are now

• Design an investigation
• Test a hypothesis
• Build and critique a model
• Spot misleading claims
• Write for a policy audience

The habits that will stay

“Is that a big number?”

“What assumptions are we making?”

“How plausible was this before we tested?”

“What is the model not capturing?”

Thank you

These are the skills you’ll use in your dissertations, your careers, and every time someone shows you a number without context.

Submission deadline: check your email for the date.

Good luck with your reports.

• End warmly. This is the last slide of the course. Thank the students, thank the demonstrators. Remind them of the submission deadline.