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A flexible e‐learning resource promoting the critical reading of scientific papers for science undergraduates
Author(s) -
Letchford Julie,
Corradi Hazel,
Day Trevor
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
biochemistry and molecular biology education
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.34
H-Index - 39
eISSN - 1539-3429
pISSN - 1470-8175
DOI - 10.1002/bmb.21072
Subject(s) - relevance (law) , resource (disambiguation) , context (archaeology) , reading (process) , conversation , curriculum , mathematics education , medical education , psychology , computer science , pedagogy , political science , medicine , biology , computer network , paleontology , communication , law
An important aim of undergraduate science education is to develop student skills in reading and evaluating research papers. We have designed, developed, and implemented an on‐line interactive resource entitled “Evaluating Scientific Research literature” (ESRL) aimed at students from the first 2 years of the undergraduate program. In this article, we describe the resource, then use student data collected from questionnaire surveys to evaluate the resource within 2 years of its launch. Our results add to those reported previously and indicate that ESRL can enable students to start evaluating research articles when used during their undergraduate program. We conclude maximal learning is likely to occur when the resource can be embedded in the curriculum such that students have a clearly articulated context for the resource's activities, can see their relevance in relation to assessed assignments and can be encouraged to think deeply about the activities in conversation with one another and/or with staff. © 2017 by The International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, 45(6):483–490, 2017.