For the DSP course, we want students to form teams of two that will work together throughout the year. This offers students the opportunity to find a partner with complementary skills and also exercise their ability to communicate and coordinate in a team setting. For students who wish to form groups of three, we request that you submit a paragraph to the course directors justifying why or how your project will benefit from having three medical student members. Example justifications could include:
Student teams are welcome to select a clinical topic of their choosing to conduct their data analysis project. The only requirements of the topic is that 1) the students must find a rich, related dataset that will be fully accessible to them by Phase II and 2) the analysis of this dataset will be able to be related to current understandings of clinical knowledge and practices. To gather ideas about possible topics and datasets, we encourage the students to looks at
This first deliverable is due in two weeks and requires:
For Phase I, you want to search, sift, and summarize literature related to your clinical topic in order to build an introduction to your project report. This written literature summary should accomplish the following tasks:
In this phase we expect students to report on at least three possible datasets that would be potentially useful for the data analysis they intend to propose. These datasets must be available to the students by Phase II of the course, and must contain a sizable amount of data for analysis (at least hundreds of samples and dozens of relevant features). The three different datasets can each be for a separate, slightly different primary analysis, or can be alternatives or complementary/augmentary datasets that would support and enrich the intended primary analysis. For this Phase, students do not need to actually gain access and download the datasets, but should be able to answer the following questions about each one:
Phase 1 Report: At the end of Phase I, all teams are expected to turn in a written report. This report will be iteratively refined over the phases of the course, eventually taking the form of a medical journal or technical report submission. For Phase I, the report should contain at least the following four sections:
This length of this report is expected to be equivalent to around 1 page of 12 pt single-spaced text, not counting any figures, tables, or bibliography sections. As stated above, it is expected to generally conform to a medical journal or technical report style. A useful collection of science/medical journal templates are provided at nextgenediting.com. Additionally, for tips on style, consider reading this guide for writing technical papers. by Michael Ernst. Finally, we request you submit the report as a pdf with your team number and a shortened title, e.g. “Team 01 - Analysis of Breast Cancer Readmission.pdf”. Report submissions will be evaluated by faculty and peers on the following:
We will assign every student to review three submitted reports each phase and provide valuable feedback to their peers. The purpose of this exercise is to give reviewers exposure to the efforts and outputs of other teams and exercise the ability to read and think critically about analyses in other domains presented to them and practice communicating their questions or suggestions. For the teams reviewed, this provides additional outside perspectives on the presentation and direction of their project that they have the chance to consider and respond to. We expect peer reviews to contain Meaningful Feedback, defined as
Some resources for how to perform and write a meaningful review can be found at the paper, How to Review a Clinical Research Paper or the JEE reviewer guidelines