This spring in the Science Literacy Teaching Journal Club we explored several areas in depth. We spent two or three weeks on each topic, and included opportunities for journal club participants to help with planning and facilitation of the sessions.
Week 1
The first topic aligned with TEP’s High Impact Change: Belonging series, events and workshops clustered around the notion of fostering students’ sense of belonging in our classes. Our reading this week looked at how aspects of students’ social identity (like gender, race/ethnicity, and nationality) may affect how they view and participate in small-group discussions in class.
Reading:
S. L. Eddy, S. E. Brownell, P. Thummaphan, M.-C. Lan, and M. P. Wenderoth (2015). Caution, Student Experience May Vary: Social Identities Impact a Student’s Experience in Peer Discussions. CBE-Life Sciences Education, 14(4), 11 – 17. http://www.lifescied.org/content/14/4/ar45.full
Week 2
This week in journal club we tried out some ways of structuring small-group discussions in the classroom while doing an exercise designed to help students learn about the scientific publishing process. We centered our discussion on an article submitted to Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions, an interactive, open-access journal in which papers and reviewers’ comments are visible during the review process and anyone can comment on submitted papers.
Reading:
Mooney, C. The world’s most famous climate scientist just outlined an alarming scenario for our planet’s future. Washington Post, July 20, 2015.http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2015/07/20/the-worlds-most-famous-climate-scientist-just-outlined-an-alarming-scenario-for-our-planets-future/
Week 3
This week in journal club we had a guest visit from Karen Matson and Pat Fellows, Instructional Technologists and Designers with CMET. They spoke about how to use Canvas to enhance student learning, including showing us some less well-known features of Canvas.
Week 4
This week in journal club we used Canvas as the platform for an interesting introductory physics activity Samantha Hopkins, Richard Wagner, and Julie Mueller put together.
We started our meetings this week at the Museum of Natural and Cultural History and then spread out a bit over campus. To prepare for the activity, participants were asked to complete a special activity on our Canvas group page.
Week 5
We spent the next four weeks focusing on communicating science: how to do it better ourselves and how to teach students to do it better. This week we discussed the “core skills” for effective science communication.
Reading:
Lucy Mercer-Mapstone & Louise Kuchel (2015): Core Skills for Effective Science Communication: A Teaching Resource for Undergraduate Science Education, International Journal of Science Education, Part B, DOI: 10.1080/21548455.2015.1113573 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/21548455.2015.1113573
Week 6
This week we built on last week’s conversation about the core skills for effective science communication by trying out an exercise specifically designed to target one of those skills: careful choice of language. The exercise used the idea Randall Munroe used to write Thing Explainer: Complicated Stuff in Simple Words, in which he describes objects and processes using only the 1000 most common words in the English language.
Reading:
Peter H. Gleick, ‘Thing Explainer’ – A Review of Randall Munroe’s New Book (Using the Ten Hundred Most Common Words), HuffPost Book Blog, Nov. 25, 2015. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-h-gleick/thing-explainer—a-revie_b_8650772.html
Week 7
To support improved science communication, the University of Oregon has been an affiliate of the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science since 2015. This week, participants visited the Alda Center website to see what resources are available: http://www.centerforcommunicatingscience.org/. We asked participants to write down three ideas they found from the website that can be used in their own science communications.
Week 8
This week we continued to explore resources available on the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science Website. To prepare, we read or listened to this interview: http://www.centerforcommunicatingscience.org/alan-alda-on-the-art-of-science-communication-i-want-to-tell-you-a-story/
After reading the transcript, we asked participants to write responses to these three questions and bring them to journal club:
- Write down 3 key concepts that you pulled away from the interview.
- What do you want to general public to know about what you do and why is it important?
- What is the story about the science you want to convey?
Additionally, last week we ended journal club by having participants answer: “What is a science concept have you found difficult to explain?” This week, we asked participants to write down an idea and bring it for an activity.
Week 9
This week we talked about accommodating students with disabilities: what’s required, what support exists on campus, what have others done to accommodate their students, and what could we do? On Thursday, Hilary Gerdes, director of UO’s Accessible Education Center, joined us to answer our questions. On Friday, Stacey Kiser, a Biology instructor from Lane Community College, shared the accommodations she has developed for a blind student this year.
Readings:
The Introduction and Chapter 1 of D. L. Miner, R. Nieman, A. B. Swanson, and M. Woods, Editors, 2001. Teaching Chemistry to Students with Disabilities: A Manual for High Schools, Colleges, and Graduate Programs, 4th Edition. The American Chemical Society.
S. Melaku, J. O. Schreck, K. Griffin, and R. B. Dabke. Interlocking Toy Building Blocks as Hands-On Learning Modules for Blind and Visually Impaired Chemistry Students. J. Chem. Educ. Articles ASAP.
Week 10
In journal club this week Brandi Baldock facilitated an exercise that combines Lego building and chemistry.