Review, revise, submit

Research Skills — Week 10 Application

The final session

The final session

• Phase 1: Finalize
• Phase 2: Peer review
• Phase 3: Debrief
• Course wrap-up

Three phases

Phase	Time	What
Finalize 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

• [16:05–16:15] Orientation. Every student should have a near-complete draft. If not, the first 20 minutes are their last chance.

Questions?

Submit questions:

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: Finalize

• The final session

Phase 1: Finalize

✏️ 20 minutes

• Phase 2: Peer review
• Phase 3: Debrief
• Course wrap-up

Last edits

Make final changes. Commit and push.

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

• [16:15–16:35] Students write. Circulate for quick questions.

Phase 2: Peer review

• The final session
• Phase 1: Finalize

Phase 2: Peer review

✏️ 40 minutes

• Phase 3: Debrief
• Course wrap-up

Assignments

Each student reviews one report from a different project group.

Navigate to your assigned repo on GitHub.

• [16:35–16:40] 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.

• [16:40–17:20] Students read and review. This is quiet, focused work. Circulate to check Issue quality.

Attendance

Show the QR from https://attendance.durham.ac.uk/mytimetable, then ← back to the task.

Phase 3: Debrief

• The final session
• Phase 1: Finalize
• Phase 2: Peer review

Phase 3: Debrief

💬 Discussion and revision

• Course wrap-up

What did you notice?

What patterns did you see across the reports you reviewed?

Any recurring issues?

What was the best thing you saw?

• [17:20–17:35] 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.

• [17:35–17:50] Students read their Issues and revise. Final commit.

Course wrap-up

• The final session
• Phase 1: Finalize
• Phase 2: Peer review
• Phase 3: Debrief

Course wrap-up

Where you started

Week 1: “Does UK biomass power help reach net zero, and should we keep paying for it?”

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?”

Any questions we missed?

Submit questions:

PollEv.com/geol

text geol to 07480 781235

• Continuation of the same Poll Everywhere Q&A activity opened at the start of the session — this is not a new poll, so don’t reset/archive it yet.
• Surface any questions that have come in since the early Questions slide, especially ones raised during today’s content.
• Once you’ve finished with this slide, archive (reset) the activity at the end of the session so questions don’t carry over.

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: Monday 11 January 2027, 12:00 (UK time). Tag your final commit final and push the tag.

Good luck with your reports.

• Check the Q&A — surface any top-voted questions before finishing.
• End warmly. This is the last slide of the course. Thank the students, thank the demonstrators. Remind them of the submission deadline.