Open AccessReading, Writing, and Presenting Original Scientific Research: A Nine-Week Course in Scientific Communication for High School Students
Author(s) -
Elizabeth S. Danka,
Brian M. Malpede
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
journal of microbiology and biology education
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.301
H-Index - 7
eISSN - 1935-7885
pISSN - 1935-7877
DOI - 10.1128/jmbe.v16i2.925
Subject(s) - rubric , scientific writing , reading (process) , medical education , course (navigation) , mathematics education , scientific literacy , public speaking , computer science , psychology , medicine , science education , engineering , art , political science , law , aerospace engineering , linguistics , philosophy , literature
High school students are not often given opportunities to communicate scientific findings to their peers, the general public, and/or people in the scientific community, and therefore they do not develop scientific communication skills. We present a nine-week course that can be used to teach high school students, who may have no previous experience, how to read and write primary scientific articles and how to discuss scientific findings with a broad audience. Various forms of this course have been taught for the past 10 years as part of an intensive summer research program for rising high school seniors that is coordinated by the Young Scientist Program at Washington University in St. Louis. The format presented here includes assessments for efficacy through both rubric-based methods and student self-assessment surveys.