Workplace health and safety (WHS) is an important aspect of working in a research environment. WHS includes many aspects such as safe handling of chemicals, safe and contained manipulation of biological material that may present hazards to humans or the environment, performance of research within confines of ethics (human and animal) and in accordance to laws and regulations of good workplace practice. Good WHS also includes your workstation and the facilities that you work in.

For this assessment we will look at chemical safety and biohazard safety and preparation of risk assessments. You will have already undertaken chemical training and perhaps biohazard training, however this tutorial will provide you with the opportunity to prepare a risk assessment and assess those of your peers. Instructions for the assessment will be provided in the tutorial.

As part of performing research you will learn many techniques and methods. Keeping good records of methods and your experimental data is an important aspect of your project. Researchers have many ways in which they record their experiments and you will establish a recording mechanism relative to your laboratory (see example below for keeping a laboratory book). One important aspect is the detail of how methods were performed, or a detailed protocol / recipe. Such a record of methods allows for consistency between experiments that you perform over the duration of your project and as a protocol for others to repeat your findings.

For this assessment you need to maintain a compendium of the methods you have learnt, examples of how you may have modified the protocol and any troubleshooting you may have performed to improve the approach. For each method you should have a short description of the principals of the method and its applications. You should also keep reflections on how you went in developing and acquiring the competency in performing methods. This assessment is submitted for feedback on 4^th September and for final marking on 4^th December 2014. The compendium will assist provide the protocols that you need for your year 2 project.

Although detailed protocols are required for performing methods in a laboratory they need to be presented in a particular style for inclusion in a publication. For this assessment you will liaise with your supervisor and identify methods to be rewritten in the format for a paper. You then need to prepare the methods section accordingly. We will address writing methods for publication in the three hour tutorial session in week 1.

Your placement supervisors will provide a report to the unit convenors. Supervisors will be evaluating your attendance; understanding of the research; attention to detail; ability to learn new techniques and efficiency in methods performance; participation and enthusiasm; and interactions with team members;