Assessment of undergraduate writing in the sciences using eportfolios

Undergraduate biology students who are asked to write about their laboratory experiences frequently express confusion about their writing and concern that they will not be able to meet instructors’ expectations. Students may be ready to perform laboratory experiments in our undergraduate general biology course, but they are less able to communicate their findings clearly and persuasively in writing. We decided to investigate whether the opportunity to re‐write and re‐submit laboratory papers might improve the clarity and accuracy of student writing. We first identified student writing that fell short of expectations, and designed teaching tools that model good scientific writing for our students. We used detailed rubrics for expectations and grading, as well as student e‐portfolio postings to assess the differences between the first and the re‐written laboratory submissions. We also surveyed students to assess their confidence about writing for science courses. Student writing grades did improve markedly after reflection, e‐portfolio assessment, and re‐writing, but students’ confidence in their ability to write an excellent scientific paper remained low. Peer review of posters, however, improves the ability of students to recognize good scientific writing. We are currently assessing whether peer review, coupled with re‐writes, improves student writing projects in introductory biology.