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Broadening the voice of science: Promoting scientific communication in the undergraduate classroom.

ABSTRACT: Effective and accurate communication of scientific findings is essential. Unfortunately, scientists are not always well trained in how to best communicate their results with other scientists nor do all appreciate the importance of speaking with the public. Here, we provide an example of how the development of oral communication skills can be integrated with research experiences at the undergraduate level. We describe our experiences developing, running, and evaluating a course for undergraduates that complemented their existing undergraduate research experiences with instruction on the nature of science and intensive training on the development of science communication skills. Students delivered science talks, research monologues, and poster presentations about the ecological and evolutionary research in which they were involved. We evaluated the effectiveness of our approach using the CURE survey and a focus group. As expected, undergraduates reported strong benefits to communication skills and confidence. We provide guidance for college researchers, instructors, and administrators interested in motivating and equipping the next generation of scientists to be excellent science communicators.

SUBMITTER: Cirino LA

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5723632 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Broadening the voice of science: Promoting scientific communication in the undergraduate classroom.

Cirino Lauren A LA Emberts Zachary Z Joseph Paul N PN Allen Pablo E PE Lopatto David D Miller Christine W CW

Ecology and evolution 20171024 23

Effective and accurate communication of scientific findings is essential. Unfortunately, scientists are not always well trained in how to best communicate their results with other scientists nor do all appreciate the importance of speaking with the public. Here, we provide an example of how the development of oral communication skills can be integrated with research experiences at the undergraduate level. We describe our experiences developing, running, and evaluating a course for undergraduates ...[more]

PMID: 29238542

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Project description:BackgroundSeminal reports, based on recommendations by educators, scientists, and in collaboration with students, have called for undergraduate curricula to engage students in some of the same practices as scientists-one of which is communicating science with a general, non-scientific audience (SciComm). Unfortunately, very little research has focused on helping students develop these skills. An important early step in creating effective and efficient curricula is understanding what baseline skills students have prior to instruction. Here, we used the Essential Elements for Effective Science Communication (EEES) framework to survey the SciComm skills of students in an environmental science course in which they had little SciComm training.ResultsOur analyses revealed that, despite not being given the framework, students included several of the 13 elements, especially those which were explicitly asked for in the assignment instructions. Students commonly targeted broad audiences composed of interested adults, aimed to increase the knowledge and awareness of their audience, and planned and executed remote projects using print on social media. Additionally, students demonstrated flexibility in their skills by slightly differing their choices depending on the context of the assignment, such as creating more engaging content than they had planned for.ConclusionsThe students exhibited several key baseline skills, even though they had minimal training on the best practices of SciComm; however, more support is required to help students become better communicators, and more work in different contexts may be beneficial to acquire additional perspectives on SciComm skills among a variety of science students. The few elements that were not well highlighted in the students' projects may not have been as intuitive to novice communicators. Thus, we provide recommendations for how educators can help their undergraduate science students develop valuable, prescribed SciComm skills. Some of these recommendations include helping students determine the right audience for their communication project, providing opportunities for students to try multiple media types, determining the type of language that is appropriate for the audience, and encouraging students to aim for a mix of communication objectives. With this guidance, educators can better prepare their students to become a more open and communicative generation of scientists and citizens.Supplementary informationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s40594-021-00304-0.

Project description:BackgroundIn a science classroom, students do not simply learn scientific ways of doing, knowing, and reasoning unless they find ways of appropriating scientific discourse. In the Next Generation Science Standards, major forms of scientific discourse are emphasized as a main part of the Science and Engineering Practices. To enhance student engagement in scientific discourse, teachers need to help students differentiate scientific ways of talking from everyday ways of talking. Thus, science teachers should be able to be aware of the differences to provide opportunities for students to engage in scientific discourse.ResultsIn this study, the classroom discourse analysis tool (CDAT) was developed to help science teachers and educators identify the patterns of their classroom discourse with the lens of scientific reasoning. The CDAT suggests a new way of discourse pattern finding with the two-dimensional graphic organizer and the quantitative data produced by the coding. To pilot the CDAT analysis, 13 videos and transcripts of two middle and one high school teachers' physical science classes were viewed and analyzed. The results from CDAT coding show illustrative information that characterizes the classroom discourse patterns in relation to scientific reasoning and teachers' questioning and feedback. A coded CDAT table shows what reasoning components used in the classroom dialogs between the teacher and students. It also shows how students engaged in the dialogs with the variations of their answers by the teacher's question and feedback.ConclusionThe results show the patterns of students' responses strongly depend on teacher's question or feedback. In addition, this analysis also generates various quantitative data that represent certain characteristics of the classroom discourse, i.e., length of dialog and the number of reasoning components used. The possible implications of CDAT analysis are to explore the relationships between teachers' discourse patterns and students' achievement along with changes in their reasoning skills. Student attitudinal outcomes such as motivations, interests, or self-efficacy could also be compared by the classroom discourse patterns revealed by CDAT. CDAT analysis itself can also be used in a teacher professional development as an intervention to help teachers see their classroom discourse patterns.

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Broadening the voice of science: Promoting scientific communication in the undergraduate classroom.

Publications

Broadening the voice of science: Promoting scientific communication in the undergraduate classroom.

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