Using Rubrics as a Scientific Writing Instructional Method in Early Stage Undergraduate Neuroscience Study (original) (raw)
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Neuroscience Letters, 2020
In neuroscience and other scientific disciplines, instructors increasingly appreciate the value of writing. Teaching students to write well helps them succeed in school, not only because they perform better on assessments but also because well-structured writing assignments improve learning. Moreover, the ability to write well is an essential professional skill, because good clear writing in conjunction with good clear thinking results in increased success in fellowship applications, grant proposals, and publications. However, teaching writing in neuroscience classrooms is challenging for several reasons. Students may not initially recognize the importance of writing, teachers may lack training in the pedagogy of writing instruction, and both teachers and students must commit substantial time and effort to writing if progress is to be made. Here, we detail effective strategies for teaching writing to undergraduates, including scaffolding of teaching assignments, both within a class and across a curriculum; use of different types of writing assignments; early integration of writing into courses; peer review and revision of assignments; mentoring by student tutors; and use of defined rubrics. We also discuss how these strategies can be utilized effectively in the context of multicultural classrooms and labs.
Journal of Biological Education, 2018
Teaching scientific writing in biology classes is challenging for both teachers and students. This article offers and reviews several useful 'toolkit' items that instructors of science writing can use to improve college student success. The tools in this kit are both conceptual and practical, and include: 1) Understanding the role of student metacognition, cognitive instruction, and strategic teaching, 2) Recognition of different student writing levels, 3) Applying the writing process, 4) Demonstrational classroom revision and editing, 5) Student-teacher sentence editing, 6) Student peer editing and guided student editing, 7) Student copy-editing, 8) Reflective writing, 9) Addressing plagiarism, paraphrasing, and proper in-text citations and referencing, and 10) Using external, on campus and online resources. Additionally, we discuss the new challenges of teaching scientific writing online versus face-toface. The discussions, approaches, and exercises presented in this paper empower teachers in assisting students in their development of a personal writing style, while simultaneously building student confidence. The tools we present augment our previous presentation of the student writing toolkit, and can improve and enhance the teaching of scientific writing to undergraduate students.
An Integrated Approach to Improve the Scientific Writing of Introductory Biology Students
The American Biology Teacher, 2011
We discuss a pedagogical strategy to improve the writing of laboratory reports. Our multipronged approach gauges students' comprehension beforehand, rewards early success, and focuses feedback on the most serious writing issues. In preliminary studies, more students were able to achieve our threshold for success in our introductory courses, and students reported being more motivated to write well.
Journal of Learning Design, 2014
A writing-intensive, upper-level undergraduate course which integrates content, context, collaboration, and communication in a unique fashion, is described. The topic of the seminar is "Scientific Writing in Chemistry" and an assignment-based curriculum was developed to instruct students on best practices in all aspects of science communication and to educate students about the scientific publication process and peer review. To effectively teach students how to understand science, both the content and the process must be included. Peer review is an integral and essential part of the process of science and the peer review tasks in the course described in this paper evolve from rubric-based peer assessments to free-format peer review. The curriculum was developed for a semester-long, three-hour seminar with limited enrolment. The curriculum was taught in the Spring semesters of 2010-2014 and enrolment data and results of evaluations collected over four years are presented to demonstrate the success of the implementations.
Scientific writing, while an indispensable step of the scientific process, is often overlooked in undergraduate courses in favor of maximizing class time devoted to scientific concepts. However, the ability to effectively communicate research findings is crucial for success in the biological sciences. Graduate students are encouraged to publish early and often, and professional scientists are generally evaluated by the quantity of articles published and the number of citations those articles receive. It is therefore important that undergraduate students receive a solid foundation in scientific writing early in their academic careers. In order to increase the emphasis on effective writing in the classroom, we assembled a succinct step-bystep guide to scientific writing that can be directly disseminated to undergraduates enrolled in biological science courses. The guide breaks down the scientific writing process into easily digestible pieces, providing concrete examples that students can refer to when preparing a scientific manuscript or laboratory report. By increasing undergraduate exposure to the scientific writing process, we hope to better prepare undergraduates for graduate school and productive careers in the biological sciences.
2013
Writing assignments, including note taking and written recall, should enhance retention of knowl-edge, whereas analytical writing tasks with metacognitive aspects should enhance higher-order thinking. In this study, we assessed how certain writing-intensive “interventions, ” such as written exam corrections and peer-reviewed writing assignments using Calibrated Peer Review and includ-ing a metacognitive component, improve student learning. We designed and tested the possible benefits of these approaches using control and experimental variables across and between our three-section introductory biology course. Based on assessment, students who corrected exam questions showed significant improvement on postexam assessment compared with their nonparticipating peers. Differences were also observed between students participating in written and discussion-based exercises. Students with low ACT scores benefited equally from written and discussion-based exam corrections, whereas students wit...
Using the Science Writing Heuristic to Improve Undergraduate Writing in Biology
International Journal of Science Education, 2011
Our objective was to investigate the impact of the Science Writing Heuristic (SWH) on undergraduates’ ability to express logical conclusions and include appropriate evidence in formal writing assignments. Students in three laboratory sections were randomly allocated to the SWH treatment (n = 51 students) with another three sections serving as a control (n = 47 students). All sections received an identical formal writing assignment to report results of laboratory activities. Four blinded raters used a 6-point rating scheme to evaluate the quality of students’ writing performance. Raters’ independent scoring agreement was evaluated using Cronbach's α. Paper scores were compared using a t-test, then papers were combined into low-scoring (3.5 of 6 points) or high-scoring (>3.5 of 6 points) sets and SWH and control cohorts were compared using Pearson's chi-square test. Papers from the SWH cohort were significantly (P = 0.02) more likely to receive a high score than those from the control cohort. Overall scores of SWH cohort papers tended to be higher (P = 0.07) than those from the control cohort. Gains in student conceptual understanding elicited by the SWH approach improved student ability to express logical conclusions about their data and include appropriate evidence to support those conclusions in formal research reports. Extending the writing tasks of the SWH to formal writing assignments can improve the ability of undergraduates to argue effectively for their research findings.
Journal of College Science Teaching, 2020
An important foundational skill developed in an undergraduate science program is the ability to find, critically evaluate, and communicate scientific information. Effective science communication depends on good writing; therefore, we leveraged student support services offered by the Writing Centre and Academic Communications, in conjunction with the Office of the Dean of Science and the departmental chair of Biology at Saint Mary’s University (Halifax) to help meet science-writing outcomes in the Biology program. Our initiative began with writing-instruction workshops, embedded into first- year labs, which supported student writing of formal lab reports. The program also featured instructor feedback on drafts and final resubmissions, and mandatory consultations with discipline- specific writing tutors during the revision phase. We used surveys, attendance records, and grades to evaluate the program’s success. Writing tutoring was incentivized and well attended, and we measured a significant improvement on final lab reports grades for students who made use of the program. Over 80% of participants, both science majors and nonmajors, reported that the program had prepared them for future courses.