Operation Wallacea

Undergrad research assistants

Overview

Presentations

Credits

Indonesia

Honduras

South Africa and Mozambique

Gaining course credit as a research assistant

For students interested in gaining course credit for their time on expedition, there are two ways of organising this: signing up for an external course or gaining internal course credit.

External course credit

If you are from a North American university and are going on expedition for a minimum of 4 weeks, all options can be used for credit (except dive training) by signing up for the distance learning module BL3400 Tropical Research and Field Study at St Andrews University in Scotland (cost £600 – approx. $1000). St Andrews will award 20 course credits for the 4 weeks (equivalent of 3-4 credits at US universities) and you will receive a graded transcript that can be used towards your GPA.

If you are at a European or Asian university, expeditions with a minimum of 4 weeks of credit bearing options (excluding dive training) can be taken as a distance learning module BIOL 2.16 Tropical Field Research Module at Imperial College London. Imperial College London will award 7.5 European Credit Transfer Scheme (ECTS) credits for the 4 weeks (cost €400) and a graded transcript will be forwarded to your department for inclusion in your overall degree.

For those participating in 4 weeks of the mountain desert surveys in Egypt, Nottingham University has organised course credit (cost £600).

In all cases, the credit system works by completion of an approved training course, followed by three weeks of Research Assistant projects or additional training and submission of a research proposal.

Required training courses

20% of the overall marks come from the exam at the end of these courses.

Research projects and additional training course

After the required training course, you have to complete 3 weeks of research projects. These can be different projects each week or they can be multiple weeks on the same project. There are also some additional training courses (e.g. DNA analysis option in Honduras) and these also count as alternatives to one of the research project weeks. Note, however, that dive training does not count as a training course since it is a skills-based module. Thus, if you include dive training on your itinerary, you will need to go for 6 weeks so you have time to complete the required training course and the 3 weeks of research or additional courses. This aspect of the course is assessed by the student completing a field diary (20%) and from assessments of performance in the field by each of the leaders of the various research projects or additional training courses (10%).

Research Proposal

You will need to submit a 1500-word research proposal based on one of the titles from a list provided by the university. The proposal will require you to complete readings before going out on site and then incorporating first-hand field experience into the final essay that needs to be completed within 2 weeks of the expedition end and submitted to the relevant university. This is worth 50% of the marks awarded.

Booking external course credit

To enrol for credit for BL3400 Tropical Research and Field Study Module with St Andrews, you would book onto the Opwall expeditions in the normal way and pay your 10% deposit. You then need to arrange a meeting with your Study Abroad Office to discuss what you would like to do and how to organize the transfer of credits to your university. If your academic advisors or Study Abroad departments have questions about the program or about how the St Andrews course credit applies, please have them email biodot@standrews.ac.uk. Once you have received approval from your university, please send an email to coursecredit@opwall.com so we are aware that you are gaining credit. In January 2012, you will be invoiced for your second 10% deposit by Operation Wallacea. Once this is paid, we pass your contact details through to St Andrews who will email you a student code for their enrolment website. You then enrol on the St Andrews website and pay the £600 registration fee, which will give you access to the St Andrews electronic library and reading lists, as well as the lectures and notes, to help you prepare for the module.

To enrol for credit with Imperial College London for BIOL 2.16 Tropical Field Research Module, you follow the same procedure as above but email opwall@imperial.ac.uk. Likewise with credit from Nottingham University for the Egyptian expedition, you follow the same procedure but email opwall@nottingham.ac.uk.

Internal course credit

It is sometimes possible to use an Operation Wallacea expedition to gain credits from your own university. This is often done through an Independent Study or Internship program. The amount of credit available will vary depending on which university you are at and the duration of your expedition. Your university will often require a piece of work based on your experience to go towards your Independent Studies or Internship, again these vary between institutions but may be in the form of a presentation or written report.

To organise gaining credit in this way, you will have to speak to your academic advisors and often your Study Abroad departments to find out what they can offer. They will usually have forms for you to complete before coming out with us, which will need certain details about the expeditions before you can gain the credit. This might be details of time allocation or academic supervision during the expedition, all of which we can happily supply to you, if needed.

If you have any questions about gaining credit from your university, please email coursecredit@opwall.com. If your academic advisors or Study Abroad departments have questions about the program, they can also contact us at this address. It is very important that if you are gaining credit in this way for an expedition, you email us in advance so we know you are gaining credits, even if you have no special on site requirements. This will make the awarding of credits much easier and ensure that any provisions you need on site are prepared in advance. If you fail to tell us about any credit you are gaining before an expedition we cannot take any responsibility for problems that may occur on site or when you return to your university.

St. Andrews Course Credit Overview