For the 2020-2021 Academic Year this course is being taught remotely. This means there will be no face-to-face teaching and you will not need to be present in person in Cambridge. The course content will be delivered, and the learning outcomes met, through the use of video-based teaching platforms and a dedicated course Virtual Learning Environment. ”
To transition to remote delivery of the course our academic staff are updating the course structure and timetable. This will allow the course to be academically engaging and of the quality expected from the Institute. A course guide will be available containing this detailed information no later than the end of July. Details of the Unit start dates and assignment submission deadlines are under the Teaching & Assessment tab. For an overview of the course scroll down this page.
What will I be studying?
The course begins by focusing on the early events in evolution, the origin of life itself and the advent of multicellularity. It goes on to investigate the challenges and opportunities that multicelled life forms had to face and how these were met in different ways by the major kingdoms. The last unit of the course focuses on three of the most important and diverse groups of organisms: the arthropods, the flowering plants and the vertebrates. It explains what these groups can tell us about evolution and explores key innovations that have allowed them to become so successful.
The teaching for this course will take place over three units, each containing five teaching sessions. Students are expected to attend all of the scheduled teaching sessions throughout the year.
Unit 1: Life: the first four billion years
This unit introduces the process of evolution on the grandest scale – the big transitions that gave rise to wholly new ways of life. We cover the early events in the evolution of life, from its origin to the invention of multicellularity, to give students an understanding of how the cumulative process of natural selection opened doors to the existence of ever more elaborate kinds of organism.
Unit 2: Kingdom-building
This unit shows how the origin of multicellularity raised new physical and biological challenges, and investigates how these challenges were met by the major kingdoms: plants, animals and fungi. The chief aim is to give students a deeper understanding of why these kingdoms are the way they are, and in particular why their solutions to the problems of multicellular life are so different.
Unit 3: Success stories
The final unit takes a more in-depth look at the evolution of three particularly important and diverse groups of organisms – the arthropods, flowering plants and the vertebrates – to uncover the secrets of their evolutionary success. Students learn about the concept of key innovations – critical transitions that opened doors to previously unexplored evolutionary possibilities – and come to understand how and why the unique vertebrate solution to life's challenges gave rise to humanity.
What can I go on to do?
You may be interested in our Certificate courses in Infectious Diseases, Immunology and Genetics, as well as our recently developed Diploma in Genetics.
Undergraduate Advanced Diploma in Research Theory and Practice
Students who have successfully completed an Undergraduate Diploma in Evolutionary Biology course might be interested in progressing their studies further and apply to join the Undergraduate Advanced Diploma in Research Theory and Practice (60 credits at FHEQ level 6) which will offer an Biological Sciences strand. Students on this course will have the opportunity to work closely and collaboratively with qualified researchers in their field and will be introduced to a research community where they will begin to forge an identity as a researcher in their own right.
Credit awarded by the Institute may also be transferred into the degree programmes of other higher education providers. However the volume of credit and the curriculum which can be transferred into degree programmes varies from institution to institution and is always at the discretion of the receiving institution.