Engaging and Motivating Undergraduate Science Students in a Writing Workshop Designed to Achieve Information Literacy and Professional Level Competence (original) (raw)
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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.
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.
Learning from Writing in College Biology
Research in Science Education, 2008
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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.
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.
Atlas Journal of Science Education, 2017
Scientific literacy is directly correlated with building a new generation of stronger scientific minds that can effectively communicate research science to the general public. Increasing communication skills in reading and writing scientific work should help improve student understanding in the areas studied. We have constructed an introductory laboratory in biology at Brandeis University that utilizes the writing and reading of scholarly articles to increase student understanding and scientific literacy. The written assignments of the course are designed to guide the students through the process of studying what is known, interpreting their own experimental data, forming unique and rational conclusions, and finally critiquing their work. We have found that students appreciate this method of learning and are better able to make the conceptual connections between real laboratory data and the concepts governing the experiments.
An integrated approach to scientific writing in first year biology
UniServe, 2009
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The American Biology Teacher
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For nearly fifty years, Writing across the Curriculum (WAC) has been growing and evolving, from disparate composition-related activities run by individual instructors to coordinated efforts across institutions that involve both writing as a process of learning and discipline-specific rhetorical practices. In this time, WAC has developed a series of principles and practices that best exemplify what the successful incorporation of writing into coursework looks like, as well as who should be responsible for this writing instruction. In the "Statement of WAC Principles and Practices" (2014), endorsed by both the International Network of WAC Programs and the CCCC Executive Committee, the onus of disciplinary-specific writing instruction is placed on disciplinary instructors, noting that "writing in the disciplines (WID) is most effectively guided by those with experience in that discipline" (p. 1). Such a statement makes sense superficially, but begs the question: What does that experience and expertise look like in practice?