The course assessment consists of an end of course report worth 50% of the mark and in-course Professional Development work worth 50% of the mark.

(1) Develop a Marketing Strategy for your chosen target & disease combination (50%)

You work in the Marketing department of a pharmaceutical company. Your task is to work up the marketing strategy for a new drug that is progressing well through the development pipeline.

Your report should be 2000 words long and uploaded in Word '.doc' file format.

Those of you who have completed the Druggable Systems and In Silico Drug Discovery modules should select a target and disease combination linked to those. For example, if you wrote about hexokinase and cancer for your Druggable Systems assessment, continue with that theme for the marketing strategy.

Those of you who have not completed these previous modules should select a particular disease and a particular target based on your own professional interests.

(2) Professional Development (50%)

 [Percentage marks for individual assessment components are shown in square brackets]

(a) Self-Assess and provide evidence for the three items in the list of Graduate Attributes [10%]

You should choose graduate attributes that you feel are most relevant to your current learning. If you choose attributes that you have discussed in previous courses, then add details of how you feel you have changed since the last time you discussed these attributes. Remember to include evidence, which can include links to the course and to files, blog or webfolio entries in the portfolio. Also remember to state in your Webfolio which you have chosen.

(b) Keep a Blog of your interactions on the course [15%]

Each time you log in to work on the course make a blog entry to record what you are setting out to do on the course, what you achieved in the session, what are the difficulties or questions that you have and what you need/want to work on in the next session. The best blogs will show some insight in how you have overcome difficulties and reflect the process of your learning, not just what you have learned. Note that this should not be written to impress at the expense of being authentic. Not all sessions are productive, and sometimes we have to go through a hard time to finally make progress. What we are looking for here is a record of what actually happened and some reflection, evidenced by links to other parts of the blog, on the process of learning.

(c) Three propositions [10%]

A Dutch thesis requires that a student makes ten "propositions" about what they have learned during their time working on it. Here we ask for three only. A proposition should be "higher order", that is they should show some thought and not be trivial or so obvious as not to be worth saying. A flavour is given at http://www.gaudisite.nl/ThesisPropositionsPaper.pdf. This is deliberately taken from another field. State each proposition in your Webfolio and write a paragraph defending the proposition (which can have links to your blog and/or to other files to support it).

(d) Choose one on-line distance course would extend your skills and knowledge beyond the present course [15%]

Using http://www.skilledup.com/ choose a course that would extend your knowledge and skills beyond the present course. In your Webfolio, make a link to the course you chose and give evidence for why you chose that course and be clear why it is a development from the present course.

Penalties

For each working day over the deadline, 5 marks will be deducted from the total percentage. After 5 days, zero marks will be returned.

Special Circumstances

No extensions can be negotiated. If you are ill such that you can't submit on time, you must contact the Programme Director to arrange a Special Circumstances form to be lodged. This must be notified near the time of submission (Circumstances noted after the results are released will not be considered). Circumstances need documentary evidence to back them up. In case of illness this would normally be a doctor's letter written on headed note-paper with a contact address.

All cases of Special Circumstances will be considered at the exam board. Note that there are no "resit" examinations at Master's level.