Blog 10 All roads lead to here.

All roads lead to here.

Finally we’ve reached the end. It seems to have flown by and it felt like very little had been achieved but on reflecting back, it couldn’t be further from the truth. Over the course of the module I’ve researched common problems in Ireland, selected a niche specific problem in GI Disorders, researched around them to find the different types of disorders and they’re causes, researched relevant cures, selected an area that was felt functional food could be used as a treatment for these disorders, decided on probiotics as the most effective treatment, researched probiotics to find kefir grains as a rough diamond in the probiotic industry that hasn’t been utilised fully, developed a kefir grain product, designed a bioprocess and bioreactor for this process, made an infographic ( I had no idea what that was), made an eportfolio (I had no idea what that was) and gave a presentation/ teaching class. That reads as a whole lot of work for 12 weeks. And to be perfectly honest if this module had been ran as most others are, I would’ve just sauntered through and crammed for an exam at the end.

I can’t decide whether this new way of learning was easier or harder than our conventional modules, but it was certainly more interesting and kept the process of learning and working continuous from start to finish. There are some aspects of the module that are obviously more constraining than the others but I did find the amount of elements that involved computing and time spent arranging on design website was a bit too much. At times it felt like we were graphic design students.

I still think it’s amazing how forcing someone to stand up in front of a class and teach a topic is a great way to get a person to learn information, but in a completely different way than just memorising for an exam. The infographic was also a great tool, in having to understand a process from start to finish well enough that you can point to relevant points in it and display the process in a manner anyone could understand.

Working as part of a group can go one of two ways; the group push each other to produce good work or a select few do the work and carry another. Thankfully we as a group knew each other well enough to understand the others situations and the push for work was always present.

At the start of the year we were asked our Hopes Fears and Expectations. I hoped that this was a module that I could learn and take an interest in as I had an eye on a future job opportunity and I have to say I really did enjoy and learn a lot over the module, not just in the pure bioprocessing. I had feared that this would turn into a module where the work load was unbearable and that I’d get left behind, that didn’t materialise. I expected to get a decent grade with the layout being given to us along with every grading rubix, but I’ll have to wait and see about that!