Towards Efficient and Effective Doctoral Education in Biomedical Sciences: Nurturing Transferable Skills

Abstract

Graduate education funding organisations in Japan focus on nurturing transferable skills in doctoral students to help them broaden their minds and see beyond academia. Biomedical doctoral students prioritise practical research, dedicating themselves to basic research and devoting their time to a research-centred daily life; their specialty is narrowed down to its deepest level. Moreover, most of the students have a part-time job outside the research activities. In this context, this study seeks to investigate what would be an effective and efficient approach for training students so as to cover a range of transferable skills, considering that students come from diverse backgrounds and have different lifestyles. This study introduces a holistic approach used in a credit module conducted in English at an interdepartmental doctoral training programme within biomedical sciences at a traditional national university in Japan. The module aims to improve students’ transferable skills as a scientist. Each session includes a series of research communications where students introduce and exchange research concepts and approaches, followed by discussions in a student-led symposium format. The findings of a questionnaire survey reveal students’ reflections and evaluations of the module as well as their perceptions of whether the module was efficient and effective. The module also contributed to increasing participants’ interest in interdisciplinary learning overall.



Author Information
Kyoko Hombo, Osaka University, Japan

Paper Information
Conference: ACEID2023
Stream: Interdisciplinary

This paper is part of the ACEID2023 Conference Proceedings (View)
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To cite this article:
Hombo K. (2023) Towards Efficient and Effective Doctoral Education in Biomedical Sciences: Nurturing Transferable Skills ISSN: 2189-101X – The Asian Conference on Education & International Development 2023 Official Conference Proceedings (pp. 605-615) https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2189-101X.2023.49
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2189-101X.2023.49


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Posted by James Alexander Gordon