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Today’s graduates in the physical sciences must be prepared to communicate
their findings to both scientists
and laypeople. They must do this over many platforms: scientific
 journal articles, abstracts written for scientific meetings, internal memos, and over the Internet on wikis, social
networking sites, and corporate web pages. How can we, as science
educators, address all of these needs in laboratory-based courses? The traditional laboratory course has students perform experiments, analyze data, and report results, usually in the form of a laboratory report sheet. Upper level labs will usually have students write long, formal laboratory
reports in the format associated
with professional journal articles.
While both of these approaches do improve student learning,
it is not clear whether they prepare students adequately
for the challenges
they meet after graduation. In Bioanalytical Chemistry Laboratory (CHEM277) we teach writing by focusing on the development of a broad range of communication skills that include both professional and informal writing
exercises. We also incorporate new technology into the course to ensure that students are prepared to communicate in the wide spectrum of arenas available to them. The learning objectives of the course still include development of analytical
and problem solving skills, but we have coupled to this a series of assignments to directly improve the students’ communication skills.
Professional writing: Upon graduation,
students must be able to communicate
scientific results and the meaning of those results to a professional
audience. In CHEM277, we require students write brief abstracts (200-300 words) for each of the experiments
performed. We introduce the students to this style of writing by using
a guided exercise. By writing abstracts,
the students learn to concisely describe the goals of the experiment, the results from the experiment,
and the meaning of those results
using professional, scientifically sound language. Our goal is to prepare the students for the formal laboratory reports that are required in their upper
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level courses.
Students in CHEM277 also participate in an interdisciplinary
course module that requires professional writing in the form of a technical memo. The students
synthesize and characterize silver articles, which are then sent to students in BSCI223 for antimicrobial
analysis. The CHEM277 students use the results of these tests and the scientific literature available on the environmental effects of silver
to make a recommendation as to whether these particles should be used in medical supplies as an antimicrobial/
antibiotic agent. This form of writing differs from that used in professional journals and requires that the students evaluate a large amount of data and then make a recommendation based on these facts. The report must include their data, their recommendation, and the reasons for that recommendation. The students are still writing to a professional audience, but are using a format that differs from the typical laboratory report.
As
more and more people become involved with online social networking sites (like Twitter or Facebook) and editable wikis (like Wikipedia), there exist many more opportunities for scientists to make their work accessible to a much larger portion of the population. We need to prepare our students for this global platform.
Writing for the layperson:
As science increasingly impacts the general public, it is essential
that students graduating with a science major know how to describe
scientific studies in a simple, straightforward manner, without
having to resort to jargon or highly technical language. We address
this in the non-majors version of this course (CHEM272), where we
require that the students to write to a general audience. The
assignment requires that students concisely describe how the
experiment is performed, the results obtained,
and the meaning of those results to a
non-science audience.
Because this style of writing requires the use
of higher-level
cognitive skills,
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the students find it much more difficult than a typical lab.
Incorporating technology:
As more and more people become
involved with online social networking sites (like Twitter or
Facebook) and editable wikis (like Wikipedia), there exist many more
opportunities for scientists to make their work accessible to a much
larger portion of the population. We need to prepare our students
for this global platform. To this end, we have incorporated both
discussion boards and course wikis into CHEM277. The students are
required to design a course wiki on one of the six major
experimental topics discussed in class; this work is done
collaboratively in groups of four and is written for students
entering the course rather than the layperson. These wikis include
background theory, a description of an experiment performed in
class, the analysis and results from that experiment, and a proposed
experiment; all of these must be consistent with the chosen topic.
This type of writing requires that the students understand the
theory and present it in a clear, organized manner. We take this
writing a step further, by having the groups do a 20-minute
presentation on the experiment described on the wiki.
Students in the course also utilize discussion
boards as part of the nanoparticle project described above. The
discussion boards are used to post articles from the primary
literature that focus on either the antimicrobial effects of
nanoparticles or the effect on the environment of these particles.
Students are asked to post one article each and to critically
evaluate two others. This form of writing is extremely informal, but
it mimics the type of reviews that are expected upon graduation.
 In order to prepare our students for the challenges they will
face upon graduation, we must provide them with a variety of writing
exercises as they move through their major’s curriculum. The
examples cited above are only a few ways in which we can couple
professional and informal writing to technology in order to give our
students the tools that they need for success after graduation.
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