Confronting Illiteracy with Scientific Communication

Explains how workplace principles of effective scientific communication also have an important role in literacy outreach programs for schools.

Girill, T.R. STC East Bay (2003). Articles>Education>Scientific Communication

The Desirability Paradox in the Effects of Media Literacy Training    

This study examines a paradox in findings regarding the effects of media literacy training on adolescents' decision making about tobacco use. Recent experiments have found that media literacy training successfully reduced participants' beliefs associated with risky behavior, whereas at the same time, their positive affect toward individuals portrayed in advertising increased. Study results confirm the hypothesis that media literacy training changes the way individuals think about the desirability of portrayals in the media. Although desirability usually represents individuals' affect toward portrayals, reports gathered after media literacy training also appear to reflect participants' increased awareness of the efforts made by advertisers to produce attractive portrayals designed to sell products and services. This awareness reduces or eliminates the impact that positive affect otherwise would have on decision making. Because this analysis suggests that individuals may respond to survey questions differently depending on their level of skill or involvement, the results raise important issues regarding issues of reliability and validity that may extend well beyond tests of this theoretical model or particular evaluation.

Austin, Erica Weintraub, Bruce E. Pinkleton and Ruth Patterson Funabiki. Communication Research (2007). Articles>Education>Scientific Communication>Risk Communication

Interdisciplinary Communication in a Literature and Medicine Course: Personalizing the Discourse of Medicine      

To provide modest insight into whether or not reading literature helps medical students communicate more effectively in the physician-patient encounter, I conducted an ethnographic study of medical students taking a required three-hour literature and medicine course. This article will demonstrate that although these medical students were embedded in the discourse of medicine, reflective writing enabled them to conceive medicine as an interpretive, personal, and idiosyncratic activity rather than as a stagnant diagnosis-based process.

Welch, Kathleen E. Technical Communication Quarterly (2000). Articles>Education>Biomedical>Scientific Communication

Knowledge Management and Life Long Education in Science    

In 1998 ENEA, the Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and the Environment, launched an e-learning platform with the mission of sharing scientific knowledge among everyone, not just workers but also students and the unemployed, in order to use its research results to support competitiveness and sustainable development. In 6 years, more than 20.000 users have followed one or more of the 46 on line courses. Many agreements with schools, universities, private and public training organisation are now under way to improve the dissemination of scientific knowledge and to build an open data base of scientific learning objects that anyone can use.

Moreno, Anna and Sergio Grande. Data Science Journal (2005). Articles>Knowledge Management>Education>Scientific Communication

Making Disability Visible: How Disability Studies Might Transform the Medical and Science Writing Classroom      

This article describes how disability studies can be used in a medical and science writing class to critically examine the assumptions of scientific discourse.  An emerging, interdisciplinary field, disability studies draws on feminist, postmodern, and post-colonial theory and extends their critiques to the medicalization of disability.  Deconstructing the medical model of disability helps students understand how science is socially constructed.  After conceptualizing disability studies, this essay discusses sample disability-related classroom activities, readings, and writing assignments.

Wilson, James C. Technical Communication Quarterly (2000). Articles>Education>Scientific Communication>Biomedical

An Outline of Technicisation Theory    

Teachers and researchers in the field of Technical English have always been concerned with the nature of this subject, its major characteristics, and its chief uses in Science and Technology. Obviously, less time and efforts have been spent on how technical English is learned, particularly in situations where foreign students have to relate their limited linguistic knowledge to meaningful realizations of the language system in technical texts of immediate concern to their specialist studies. This research is an early effort to show how technical English is learned and, more specifically, what relevant factors are involved in the overall learning process.

Soheili, A., D. Barjasteh, and Laila Al Qadhi. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (2001). Articles>Scientific Communication>Education>Language

Teaching Science Writing  

Teaching students how to write about science for the general public involves helping them research subjects, publications, and audiences. They should learn about research, organization of articles, audience analysis, and writing strategies, and use human interest, background information and examples, proper terminology and pace, and techniques to motivate readers to read the article.

Samson, Donald C., Jr. STC Proceedings (1999). Articles>Education>Writing>Scientific Communication

Teaching Students to Design Information About Difficult Subjects: Public Information About Pediatric AIDS  

Advanced technical communication students analyzed information about pediatric AIDS that was designed for dtrerent segments of the public. They then produced individual projects for local segments of the university and surrounding community. Through this assignment, students learned the importance of community standards in designing accurate and locally 'acceptable' communication about a difficult subject.

Porter, Lynnette R. STC Proceedings (1997). Articles>Education>Scientific Communication>Biomedical

Teaching Technical Writing to University Students Using the Medical Report  

Technical and medical writing share many similar properties. Using a medical report assignment, in which students research and write about a physical or mental disease, is an effective tool that introduces the principles of technical writing. The assignment for lower division students is to write in the IMRAD format, while upper division students compose a report integrating multiple sources cited in CBE documentation style. In each case, adhering to fact-based, clear, audience-appropriate language in a technical format provides the student with valuable practice writing in this important genre.

Mizrahi, Janet. STC Proceedings (2003). Articles>Education>Scientific Communication>Biomedical

Writing Across the Chemistry Curriculum  

While chemistry faculty agree that writing is an important professional skill, few know how to teach it. They lack a strategy for incorporating writing into their courses, skill in designing eflective writing assignments, and knowledge of evaluation methods. Our practical manual, funded by the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation and the College of Arts and Sciences of the University of Tennessee Knoxville, will provide chemistry and other science faculty with these skills along with a set of ready-to-use assignments for their courses. The manual will allow chemistry faculty to teach writing purposefully and effectively, focusing on the scientific content while systematically developing this all-important skill.

Kovac, Jeffrey and Donna Walter Sherwood. STC Proceedings (1997). Articles>Education>Scientific Communication>Biomedical

Wikipedia and the New Curriculum

Students and teachers alike must understand how systems of knowledge creation and archivization are changing. Encyclopedias are no longer static collections of facts and figures; they are living entities. Just check the entry on Global Warming.

Parry, David. Science Progress (2008). Articles>Education>Scientific Communication>Online

Writing Like a Doctor

The mere act of reading good books, if you are not stopping to scrutinize the moves and tools used by the writers, examining and dissecting the choices they have made and why they work, will do nothing for you when you sit down to write. If you want a journal to accept your paper, or a federal agency to grant you coin, you have to make clear what is at stake and why the reader should care. Then you have to put forward the strongest reasoning based on evidence you provide in the clearest language you are able to rally. And then you need to know when you need help.

Toor, Rachel. Chronicle of Higher Education (2009). Articles>Education>Writing>Scientific Communication

Contemporary Educational Psychology: Cognitive Processes in Complex Science Text and Diagrams     

Ainsworth’s (2006) DeFT framework posits that different representations may lead learners to use different strategies. We wanted to investigate whether students use different strategies, and more broadly, different cognitive activities in diagrams versus in running text. In order to do so, we collected think-aloud protocol and other measures from 91 beginning biology majors reading an 8-page passage from their own textbook which included 7 complex diagrams. We coded the protocols for a wide range of cognitive activities, including strategy use, inference, background knowledge, vocabulary, and word reading. Comparisons of verbalizations while reading running text vs. reading diagrams showed that high-level cognitive activities—inferences and high-level strategy use—were used a higher proportion of the time when comprehending diagrams compared to when reading text. However, in running text vs. diagrams participants used a wider range of different individual cognitive activities (e.g., more different types of inferences). Our results suggest that instructors might consider teaching students how to draw inferences in both text and diagrams. They also show an interesting paradox that warrants further research—students often skipped over or superficially skimmed diagrams, but when they did read the diagrams they engaged in more high-level cognitive activity.

Cromley, Jennifer G., Lindsey E. Snyder-Hogan and Ulana A. Luciw-Dubas. Contemporary Educational Psychology (2009). Articles>Education>Scientific Communication>Technical Illustration