Course Description and Practical Project Guidelines
Course Description
This course is offered by the Department of Oral Medicine and Oral Surgery for final-year undergraduate dental students. It provides students with the fundamental knowledge and skills required to plan, conduct, and report biomedical research, with particular emphasis on scoping literature reviews in the biomedical and dental fields. The course also aims to equip students with essential competencies in research proposal development, research ethics, grant applications, critical appraisal of the scientific literature, scientific writing, and oral presentation of research findings at formal academic meetings.
Practical Component
For the practical component of the course, students will work in groups to undertake a supervised research project. The project will progress through the following stages:
1. Selection of a Research Question
With guidance from their assigned supervisor, each group will identify and formulate a research question suitable for investigation through both an original (experimental) research project (a presumed approach) and a scoping literature review (a real approach). The selected question should be relevant to the biomedical or dental sciences and feasible within the scope and timeframe of the course.
2. Assignment 1 (Research Proposal - Group work -15%)
Students will develop a research proposal based on the assumption that the project will be conducted using an original research design, such as a cross-sectional study, longitudinal study, case-control study, or randomized controlled trial. The proposal (that should include ethics and grant sections) must be completed using the modified research proposal form provided by the Jordan University of Science and Technology (JUST). Students are not required to submit these documents to the JUST Deanship of Scientific Research or the Institutional Review Board (IRB). This exercise simulates the preparatory stages of conducting original research and is intended solely to achieve the relevant course learning outcomes. It does not constitute formal research approval or authorize the conduct of any proposed original study. The ethics section must identify and address the potential risks and benefits of the proposed research, with appropriate justification for the selected study design. The grant section should be concise and include a list of the required equipment and materials, together with brief justifications and estimated costs. One page should be sufficient for the grant section.
Students will be assessed using a rubric to be provided. This component accounts for 15% of the total course mark.
Deadline: End of Week 4.
3. The Scoping Literature Review Project
3.1. Literature Search
As obtaining formal research ethics approval for an original research may take several weeks or months, the process may extend beyond the duration of this course. For that reason, the practical project will be conducted as a scoping literature review (that does not require ethics approvals) rather than an original research study. Students will commence the real scoping literature review study component based on the research question agreed upon with their supervisor. Work on this component is scheduled to begin in Week 5, assuming the proposed project has received the necessary approvals.
Students will identify and retrieve relevant scientific literature using appropriate search strategies and reliable sources. The initial search results will then be refined through screening and filtering to identify studies relevant to the research question. This is completed through (1) determining keywords and Boolean search strategies using field-specific search operators and (2) applying relevant inclusion and exclusion criteria to the preliminary search set. The outcome of these steps is called the pre-appraisal search set (PASS).
3.2: Assignment 2 (Objective Critical Appraisal - Group work - 15%)
The pre-appraisal search set (PASS) will undergo objective critical appraisal using the Critical Appraisal Skills Programme (CASP) checklists, as appropriate to the study designs identified. This process will refine the initial set of studies further and produce the more focused post-appraisal search set (PoASS), which will constitute the final evidence base for the scoping review. This stage will be completed through the submission of Assignment 2: CASP Review (Group Work, 15%) by the end of Week 8.
4. Assignment 3 (Completion of the Scoping Review and Preparation of the Research Paper - Group work - 20%)
Under the supervision of their assigned supervisor, each group will complete the scoping review project and prepare a scientific manuscript presenting the review's findings. The manuscript must be prepared in accordance with the author guidelines and submission requirements of JUST's Jordan Journal of Dentistry. Submission of the manuscript to the journal is a course requirement. Students must provide evidence of submission to demonstrate that the requirements of Assignment 3 have been met. Assignment 3 should be submitted by the end of week 11
5. Oral Presentation of Research Findings (Group work -10%)
Each group will present its research findings orally to an audience and respond to questions and feedback. The presentations will be organized toward the end of the semester, with the date and venue announced in due course. Oral presentations will be evaluated by a panel of assessors who are external to the student groups. This component accounts for 10% of the total course mark.
The assessment criteria and presentation requirements will be communicated to students in advance.
The course requirements outlined above are primarily assessed through group work. All students are expected to contribute equally to the group work. Supervisors will ensure that specific roles and responsibilities are assigned to individual group members and subgroups to promote equitable participation, accountability, and effective collaboration. Accordingly, assessment marks will reflect both the individual contributions of students within their assigned subgroups and the overall performance of the group.
In addition to the group-based assessments above, students are required to complete the following individual assessments in the course:
Online quiz via the e-learning platform ? 10% of the total course mark.
Final examination ? 30% of the total course mark.