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MBBS honours


Introduction

The Honours program is an optional program that is offered to provide research training opportunities to students enrolled in the MBBS degree. The program is undertaken concurrently with the rest of the course and allows students to develop a more complete understanding of an area of medical science or clinical medicine under the supervision of an academic member of staff or adjunct staff (e.g. staff of our hospitals who hold academic appointments with the University). Honours will be assessed by a thesis (called “report” till now - typically shorter than the usual ‘thesis’) and a research seminar and will be graded to reward and recognise academic achievement.

Objectives of the program:

  1. To provide training in the core research skills required to undertake future clinical or basic medical research.
  2. To recognise high academic achievement throughout the MBBS course.


When to apply to undertake honours:

Students can apply to undertake Honours any time from the end of Block 4 in Stage 1 up until 31 March of Stage 3, Year 3.
Research is undertaken from the time of acceptance into the Honours stream until 30 June in Stage 3, Year 4 when the thesis is submitted.

Students enrolled in the Medical Program part-time are not eligible to enrol in Honours.

Eligibility for New Resolutions

Students who commenced Stage 1 of the Medical Program in 2009 must following the new resolutions if they wish to undertake Honours. The details of the new resolutions are below.


New Resolutions

To be eligible for the award of Honours students need to achieve the following grades in assessments throughout the 4 years of the MBBS course:

 Assessment  Grade required to be eligible for Honours (%)
 Year 1 written exam  Satisfactory
 Years 1-3 portfolio on Personal and Professional Development  Satisfactory
 Year 2 written exam  Minimum 75% competency
 Year 2 OSCE-practical exam  Satisfactory
 Year 3 Long case practical exam
  Satisfactory
 Years 3 and 4 written exams  Minimum average 75% competency

Eligibility for the award of Honours will be contingent upon achieving at least a 75% competency and adjusted for item difficulty in the Stage 2 written summative exam and a pass in all other components of assessment in Stages 1 and 2. When students receive their individual result sheet for the Stage 2 written summative exam, if they are eligible for the Honours program, they will be identified on this assessment sheet as being “eligible for entry into the Honours program”.

In addition, students must obtain a ≥ 75% competency adjusted for item difficulty in at least 48 credit points in Stage 3, Years 3 and 4 of the Medical Program to obtain Honours. Since the Honours program must be integrated into the rest of the course, students can commence Honours on the basis of the above criteria for Stages 1 and 2 but can only be awarded Honours if they satisfy the eligibility criteria given above for Stage 3, Years 3 and 4. If they do not satisfy these criteria but successfully complete a research project, their academic transcript will show that they completed a 12 credit points Research Project.

Students who fail the Research Project will be required to undertake an Elective at the end of the program as an additional unit in order to achieve the correct number of credit points required for the award of MBBS.

Projects

Students will be encouraged to participate in research projects in a wide range of areas including clinical research, medical sciences, rural and public health, and medical education. Students are encouraged to use the Honours research studies as an opportunity to undertake research in international settings. The Honours project must address one of the themes of the Medical Program (Basic and Clinical Sciences, Population Medicine, Patient-Doctor and Personal and Professional Development). Of course, these themes overlap and a project could encompass aspects of more than one theme.

Selection of a Project

The selection of each Honours project is an individual choice for the student. The student should identify an area of interest and seek an appropriate supervisor for the project. In many cases, students will be able to identify potential projects and supervisors based upon their own knowledge of the activities with the Faculty.

It may be possible for more than one student to work on a research project. In this case, however, the supervisor must ensure that each student performs or analyses a different aspect of the project and that each student writes an individual research report.

The individual Honours project should not be an overwhelming additional burden on the student. It must be remembered that these projects are additional to the required self-directed learning of the Medical Program. Supervisors should be aware of this and realise that the workload expected from the students could not be the same as that from full-time Honours students. Accordingly, it is suggested that a student spend an average of 6 hours per week on the project. The anticipated duration of a project is between 6 and 12 months of work. A wide variety of tasks are suitable for Honours projects.

Some suitable tasks are:

  • Participation in one aspect of an ongoing research project
  • A survey and analysis of results obtained
  • A critical writing review of a research or clinical topic
  • Participation in special patient clinics and review of ancillary basic and/or clinical science data
  • Development and evaluation of educational materials, evaluation tools or analysis of educational issues


These examples are suggestions and it is anticipated that students and potential supervisors will formulate a wide variety of Honours projects. Students should not be expected to set up large new research projects nor should they serve simply as research or clinical assistants. The project application and final report should make clear the student's intellectual input into the work.

Project proposal

Once an area of interest and a potential topic has been selected, the student should prepare a 1200 - 1500 word Proposal.

The following sections should be included in the proposal:

  • Project Title
  • Aims - Describe the aims of the Project including a clear statement of the hypothesis to be tested.
  • Background - Provide a brief review of progress in the field of research. Include reference to relevant publications.
  • Research Plan - Describe the experimental design techniques to be used and methods of statistical analysis.
  • Timeline - Provide a draft timeline with details of when the various phases of your research will be carried out.
  • References - Include a list of all references sited in the application (References are not included in the word limit).

Statistics

It is the responsibility of the supervisor to ensure the appropriate support is provided in the use of statistical analysis. If this support is not available within the supervisor's research group then it may be necessary for the supervisor to provide funding for the student to attend a training course.

Ethics information - Please see link for Ethics information: http://sydney.edu.au/research_support/ethics/

Campus and Clinical School Honours Coordinators
Main campus: Dr Luke Henderson

Tel: 9351 7063
Northern: Dr Ben Harris

Tel: 9926 7703
Central: Dr David Bowen

Tel: 9565 6264
Concord: Dr Suchitra Chandar

Tel: 0414 792 279
Westmead: A/Prof Nick Manolios

Tel: 9845 6305
Nepean: Prof Jack Wall

Tel: 4734 2613
Children's Hospital at Westmead: Dr Meg Phelps

Tel: 9845 3374
Orange: Dr Catherine Hawke

Tel: 6392 8730
Dubbo:

A/Prof Bob North

Tel: 6885 7973
Sydney Adventist Hospital: Dr Stephanie Phillips

Tel: 9351 3130

Supervision

Students can have more than one supervisor if required. At least one supervisor must have a University of Sydney appointment. It is the responsibility of the primary supervisor to nominate 2 appropriate examiners for the project.

Depending on the nature of the research project, supervisors and students should meet regularly to review the student's progress.

List of current honours supervisors.

Review of progress

The MPAU will issue progress report forms to all Honours students 6 months after enrolment in the program. For students who enrol in Honours at the end of Stage 1, progress will be reviewed 6 months and 18 months after enrolling. It is the student's responsibility to ensure that all parties complete the progress report before submission to the MPAU. Students who fail to complete and return the report may be asked to show cause as to why they should be allowed to continue in the Honours Program.

For Medical Program Honours students, the 6 month progress report form and review process are mechanisms whereby the Faculty can be assured that satisfactory progress is being made. It should not be the first point at which a supervisor and candidate discover there is a problem and identification of difficulties on the form will not in itself make them go away. However, the report form is the place to put on record any difficulties which may or may not have been unavoidable including, for example periods of personal illness or misadventure. The report form should also be an instrument for advising the Faculty that the student's performance has been satisfactory from the supervisor's point of view.

Following review of this report by your Clinical School's Honours Co-ordinator, you will be asked to attend a 10-15 minute interview to discuss your progress. On the basis of the evidence provided in the report form and the interview, the Honours Co-ordinator recommends to the Faculty the conditions of candidature to apply for the remaining duration of enrolment in Honours. The Chair of the Medical Program Honours committee then either (1) approves the progress based on the evidence provided or (2) may require the candidate or supervisor to provide further evidence of progress or the provision of satisfactory resources after a period considered appropriate.


Time commitment

The Honours/Research project Unit of Study is worth 12 credit points and equivalent to a load of 312 hours.

Assessment and grading

Grading of Honours will be introduced in 2011 and will apply to current 3rd Year students (students who enrolled in Medicine 1 in 2008) who enrol in Honours under the new resolutions.

Assessment of Honours will be based on a research seminar (10% of Honours mark), given in the student’s Department/Discipline, as well as a ~10,000 word thesis (90% of Honours mark), which is examined by 3 examiners (supervisor and 2 others who are experts in the field).

Honours classes will be calculated according to the student's final Honours WAM (HWAM). The HWAM will be calculated from the 80 core credit points in Stage 3, plus the Honours mark which will be given double weighting.

The classes of Honours that may be awarded are:

(i) First Class (HWAM 80-100)
(ii) Second Class/ Division 1 (HWAM 75-79)
(iii) Second Class/ Division 2 (HWAM 70-74)

Students who achieve an HWAM of ≥90% may be awarded a University Medal.

Final report

All students should be familiar with the University of Sydney Plagiarism Policies:

* Plagiarism: Student Coursework - Policy and Procedures (15/02/2005) (PDF).
* Academic Honesty in Coursework (plagiarism) (05/04/2006) (PDF).

The final Honours report should not be more than 10,000 words (indicative only). It should include or represent a piece of work that is of a potentially publishable standard. It should also include a review of the methods used in the project and the findings of the project against what is already known in the field. The critical review should include suggestions for further study which might advance the field and which could in turn entail, where appropriate, an examination of the wider implications of the findings for community and individual health concerns. It is of course possible that the project report can be presented in a format (such as a submitted paper) that is briefer than 10,000 words. Similarly, if the project is presented in other than written format (e.g. web-based project), it should represent a similar amount of work. Experienced supervisors/examiners will naturally exercise their discretion in this matter. The final report should clearly identify the student's intellectual input into the work. Considerable flexibility in the final major theme reporting is encouraged, but examples might include:

  • A written report of approximately 10,000 words, including a critical review of methods used in the project and the findings of the project against what is already known in the field
  • A draft of a paper that will be submitted for publication. If jointly authored the student must be either first or last author and have written the majority of the paper. A letter from the supervisor explaining the student's contribution to obtaining the data and to writing the paper must be included. A covering letter should explain the Theme goal addressed.
  • A Web document or CD-ROM. A covering letter should explain the Theme goal addressed.


The student submits three copies of the Honours Report direct to Liz Cooper at the MPAU who will then distribute one copy of the report to each of the three nominated examiners (including the nominated supervisor). Once the reports have been marked, all three examiners reports should be forwarded to Liz Cooper. If emendations are required Liz will contact the student with information about this process.

The due date for submission for is 30 June in Stage 3, Year 4 .

Extensions will ONLY be given in cases of illness or misadventure. In this instance, a special consideration form must be submitted. If your supervisor goes away for an extended period of time it is the student's responsibility to find a temporary supervisor if necessary. A rural placement is also not a valid reason for requesting an extension.

Assessment of the project

Each project will be assessed by two examiners. These examiners need to be experts in the project areas but otherwise unconnected to the Honours projects.
The examiners will have the task of determining whether or not the project is of a sufficient standard to merit award of Honours. The criteria for assessment will include the following:

  1. Did the submitted project address the original goals of the project proposal?
  2. Did the project adequately address relevant aspects of the nominated theme?
  3. Does the project represent a sufficient body of work for the time available to the student?
  4. Is the final submitted project work of satisfactory standard?

The examiners will be asked to grade each project. The grading will be criterion-referenced, using the following categories:

  1. Satisfactory for the award of Honours (with or without minor emendations)
  2. Requires revisions and re-submission for repeat assessment for the award of Honours
  3. Unsatisfactory for the award of Honours.


The examiners will be required to provide a written critique to the student in the event that minor emendations are required and these should be completed within one month of the project's assessment. If revisions are required before re-submission, these should be completed within a period of three months from the time of the project's assessment. No further extensions of time will normally be allowed as this would impinge upon subsequent Medical Program coursework.

A student has the right of appeal against the assessment of the Honours project. The grounds for an appeal shall include difficulty with supervision, unforeseen circumstances affecting the execution of the project, major disagreement with the assessment grading by the student and his/her supervisor. Students must read the Student Appeals against Academic Decisions in the Medical Program Policy (policies page) before submitting an appeal. Student must ensure they follow the stages and procedures in the policy if they are to progress with an appeal. Please note also that at the first stage of appeal, discussions should be had with the Sub-Dean Medical Program Honours, Dr Margot Day. Appeals must be lodged with the Medical Program Administration Unit (MPAU) in the Edward Ford Building in the timeframe set out in the policy.

Appointment of Examiners for Honours Project Form (.DOC)
Examiner's Report on Project Form (PDF)

Prizes

Work submitted may be eligible for the determination of Prizes awarded by the Dean of the Faculty on recommendation of the Heads of Department. There is information on Prizes on the Medical Program website under Course Information.

Summary and rationale for changes introduced in 2008

  1. Introduction of a 12 credit point Unit of Study makes Honours an identifiable research component within the degree. This is the minimum number of credit points that satisfies Academic Board requirements for the award of degrees with Honours. The introduction of an identifiable research component means that students cannot enrol in both Honours and the Elective without exceeding the maximum number of credit points for an award and incurring additional financial liability. It will be possible, however, for Honours to be undertaken overseas with appropriate supervision and approval of the Faculty at the time other students are completing their Elective Term.
  2. Grading of Honours will enable recognition of excellence. This will also bring MBBS Honours at the University of Sydney in line with other Australian medical schools and thereby make our MBBS graduates competitive for postgraduate scholarships, hospital appointments and Royal College specialist training programs.
  3. Introduction of the Honours seminar that counts towards the final score.
  4. Increase in the total number of hours from the initial 200 hours, in the recent years 250 hours, to 312 hours. This nominally includes writing up the thesis.
  5. Change in the entry criteria and a change in the standards to be maintained throughout the course to stay in the Honours program.

Dr Margot Day
Sub-Dean, Medical Program Honours

Frequently asked questions regarding the new Honours program