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Teaching scientific literacy in an undergraduate program through a combination of reading and graded presentations
Author(s) -
Bloom Timothy J
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
the faseb journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.709
H-Index - 277
eISSN - 1530-6860
pISSN - 0892-6638
DOI - 10.1096/fasebj.22.1_supplement.658.3
Subject(s) - presentation (obstetrics) , class (philosophy) , reading (process) , information literacy , identification (biology) , medical education , mathematics education , scientific literacy , computer science , communication skills , psychology , multimedia , medicine , pedagogy , science education , botany , artificial intelligence , biology , political science , law , radiology
To be successful at communication, students must learn how to receive as well as transmit information. An important early skill in receiving scientific information is identifying the critical content of primary literature, which allows for evaluation of that content. It is also important for students to become comfortable with sharing information, particularly in the format of an oral presentation. My department uses a two‐course series to develop these information skills in undergraduate students. In the first course students learn to identify the information present in a scientific paper during small group discussions, and how to summarize that information by abstracting several papers of their choice. The students’ mastery of information identification, retrieval and transfer is assessed with an oral presentation of a scientific paper to their peers and department faculty members. Grades for the presentation are based on scoring by the faculty, the class and the presenting student after watching a video of their presentation. The second course includes two more oral presentations. Over the two semesters, student's scores for their own presentations move from higher than those of the faculty to the same as those of the faculty, suggesting that in addition to improving their communication skills they have improved their ability to accurately assess their effectiveness at oral presentations.