As part of the coursework for a third year course called ecology and ecosystems in a changing environment (essentially a course in ecological modelling) the students must develop their own model of a particular ecological process (any ecological process). The model can be conceptual, mathematical, spreadsheet based or even physical. The students have two months to develop the model and then must make an individual five minute lecture based around slides, overheads or a poster and discussing an application of the model to environmental change. Their colleagues are asked to put forward questions if they do not understand any of the talk. The audience also has to fill in a form assessing the scientific and presentational quality of each speaker and the comments from these are distributed to the individual speakers for their information. The overheads/poster are taken in and contribute 5% of the marks for the course. A further 30% of the marks are contributed by a written report on the model and model building process.

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