[earlnmeyer78]

Hello,
My name is Earl and I am a graduate student in chemistry looking to go into education after receiving my PhD. Since beginning my higher education career I have had the pleasure of meeting a variety of intellectuals, may they be professors or students that approach the teaching and learning of the chemical fields very differently. In my few years of being a teaching assistant, mostly in organic and analytical labs, an approach I feel really gives students the best real-world experience in the comfort of the classroom, is having them read and review recent journal articles.
   
As a lab TA, I have read countless lab reports and sifted through pages of undeveloped writing, even from junior and senior level students. From the very beginning of the reports I can tell certain students still do not have the writing structure well engrained. The first thing I read is the abstract, which should tell the general background of the experiment, the reason is s being done, the general method, the results, and the conclusions. I often find equations and calculations added as well! Reading these reports have made me realize students don’t even understand how important their writing structure and style is, once they reach higher-level chemistry positions!

The best way to teach this is to force them to read real articles. Not only will students gain useful tools on how to write, but they will also be able to learn all about the greatest recent innovations in chemistry, and be encouraged to continue with their studies and make their own discoveries. Let me know what thoughts you have on this topic!

[MaryMolar]

I agree it is difficult to teach students, but I’m a tutor for freshman and sophomore students, and they have a very preliminary knowledge of chemistry. How are they expected to understand complex chemistry at such a preliminary point in their careers? Plus, journal articles are long. How will they have time to learn the fundamentals when they’re expected to read lengthy articles as well?

[earlnmeyer78]

I agree it is difficult to teach students, but I’m a tutor for freshman and sophomore students, and they have a very preliminary knowledge of chemistry. How are they expected to understand complex chemistry at such a preliminary point in their careers? Plus, journal articles are long. How will they have time to learn the fundamentals when they’re expected to read lengthy articles as well?

These are definitely good points, but think about how much students can learn just from reading the abstract of an article. Abstracts are part of every lab report are in the same prose as the rest of the article, meaning they can gain information about the writing style. They are also very useful to learn to write if they do research and want to apply to conferences. It is true there are often vocabulary unknown to younger students, and this can make it confusing, however with the access we now have to a wide breath of information, I feel students can get a gist of the research from a few Google searches. In addition, abstracts tend to contain mostly summary statements understandable to the general public. The most confusing parts of the article are usually the calculations and detailed procedure, neither of which is included in the abstract. As long as the conclusion and results are well understood, the students should still be gaining some new information.

[MaryMolar]

I guess if they are only assigned to read the abstracts, the idea is more viable. I still feel, however, that it may be advanced for younger students that should be focusing more on the fundamental topics in chemistry. Can you give a clearer example of what this type of assignment might look like?

[Antibuddy]

I am a Professor of analytical chemistry in Germany, and I make my first and second year students do this every other week. They read an entire journal article and write a summary report of it in a very specific format that I give them. I feel they have reached the intellectual level to already understand the full article. Then again, I teach only students from the chemistry and biochemistry departments. I could see the abstract lesson plan being used for students in other majors, and maybe even students at lower levels of education.

[earlnmeyer78]

I am a Professor of analytical chemistry in Germany, and I make my first and second year students do this every other week. They read an entire journal article and write a summary report of it in a very specific format that I give them. I feel they have reached the intellectual level to already understand the full article. Then again, I teach only students from the chemistry and biochemistry departments. I could see the abstract lesson plan being used for students in other majors, and maybe even students at lower levels of education.

Yeah, I feel this kind of assignment could work for students from many disciplines and at many levels. Younger student like high school students could get great exposure to real science. Being able to read through and understand several abstracts quickly is also a great skill to have at an early age, since I know many graduate students also still trouble with this!

[MaryMolar]

I am a Professor of analytical chemistry in Germany, and I make my first and second year students do this every other week. They read an entire journal article and write a summary report of it in a very specific format that I give them. I feel they have reached the intellectual level to already understand the full article. Then again, I teach only students from the chemistry and biochemistry departments. I could see the abstract lesson plan being used for students in other majors, and maybe even students at lower levels of education.

Maybe that system works for a field like analytical chemistry because it’s more about understanding and learning methods for quantifying and qualifying molecules and atoms. Subjects like organic and general chemistry just aren’t as susceptible to this format of learning. Firstly general chemistry is for students at a preliminary level and is meant to give students a broader idea of the subject. At this point students just do not have the background to grasp more detailed topics. Organic chemistry is a topic entirely based on learning how organic reactions work, understanding the bonds between large molecules, and creating new molecules with this knowledge. Perhaps it is more possible to include reading articles to enhance this subject, but there is so much content students must learn, that I don’t think time taken away from studying is worth it. Just my opinion as a senior undergraduate student who tutors younger students! I’m not an educator, but I do remember how much time I spent in those classes and can’t see how I would have learned all the content I did, while also needing to read long and complicated articles.

In terms of cutting down the assignment to just abstracts, I feel it would definitely make the assignment less time consuming and accessible to younger students. Abstracts are still good sources of information and are clear in communicating the most important parts of the article, since is focuses on the results and main background points. At the same time, however, I’m not sure if it will create the same benefits as @Earlenmeyer is looking for in educating students. If you’re interested in giving them a sense of what professional scientific literature looks like, then I can see it as beneficial. However if you want to teach students how to read and write complicated scientific writing, journal articles make far more sense. Again, I believe this should only be for older more experienced students, but choosing between abstracts and articles really depends on what you are looking for in the assignment.

[earlnmeyer78]

@MaryMolar

You make a very good point in terms of how assigning abstracts versus journal articles will teach students different skills. My intention is to get students used to reading lots of articles while still picking up certain writing technique all while being able to interpret the complex chemistry portion of such tasks. This is a lot to pack into one assignment, but I’ve created one I feel may encompass all of these goals:

“Every week students will be asked to sift through recent published articles from a specific scientific journal. They will then choose five abstracts: three that they find the most interesting and two they think are the best written. These articles cannot overlap meaning none of them can be considered both the best written and most interesting. These abstracts will be discussed in class on their content as well as writing technique. The next week students will then be expected to read the article associated with the abstract they find most interesting and hand-in a rewritten abstract for that article using the writing techniques previously discussed.”

I feel this kind of assignment encapsulates the benefits of both the abstracts and journal articles.

[Antibuddy]

@MaryMolar

You make a very good point in terms of how assigning abstracts versus journal articles will teach students different skills. My intention is to get students used to reading lots of articles while still picking up certain writing technique all while being able to interpret the complex chemistry portion of such tasks. This is a lot to pack into one assignment, but I’ve created one I feel may encompass all of these goals:

“Every week students will be asked to sift through recent published articles from a specific scientific journal. They will then choose five abstracts: three that they find the most interesting and two they think are the best written. These articles cannot overlap meaning none of them can be considered both the best written and most interesting. These abstracts will be discussed in class on their content as well as writing technique. The next week students will then be expected to read the article associated with the abstract they find most interesting and hand-in a rewritten abstract for that article using the writing techniques previously discussed.”

I feel this kind of assignment encapsulates the benefits of both the abstracts and journal articles.

This is an interesting format. I feel that though this is time consuming, it can be very beneficial. I still feel my assignment is better for my students, however, because my intention is to get them focusing on the content of the articles more than imitating the writing technique. But for your purposes of sifting through several articles, I see how this could be useful.

[MaryMolar]

@MaryMolar

You make a very good point in terms of how assigning abstracts versus journal articles will teach students different skills. My intention is to get students used to reading lots of articles while still picking up certain writing technique all while being able to interpret the complex chemistry portion of such tasks. This is a lot to pack into one assignment, but I’ve created one I feel may encompass all of these goals:

“Every week students will be asked to sift through recent published articles from a specific scientific journal. They will then choose five abstracts: three that they find the most interesting and two they think are the best written. These articles cannot overlap meaning none of them can be considered both the best written and most interesting. These abstracts will be discussed in class on their content as well as writing technique. The next week students will then be expected to read the article associated with the abstract they find most interesting and hand-in a rewritten abstract for that article using the writing techniques previously discussed.”

I feel this kind of assignment encapsulates the benefits of both the abstracts and journal articles.

I like the attempt to compromise and learn from both! It does seem like a good amount of class time would be taken up by this kind of assignment, but I see this working in a writing-driven chemistry course. I know this may take up even more time, but you may want to include a review session where peers can look over each other’s abstracts and help better their writing? It could simulate how researchers review each other’s work before publication. Hope you are able to implement this kind of assignment in one of your classes some day!

[Dan]

Scientific writing was something I was never taught formally as an undergraduate, and I think I would have benefited from it. I picked up a lot during postgraduate studies through osmosis, but in the end I found Stanford's "Writing in the Sciences" free online course very useful - I am much happier with my writing style now. The lectures and exercises on editing for concision were particularly useful for me.

I think more exposure to primary literature at undergraduate level is a good thing. Maybe to start with, it would be a good idea to select a range of papers for the students, otherwise the sheer volume and variable writing quality of published papers may be overwhelming and very time consuming. There are two skills here: learning to identify a good paper and learning to write well. Maybe presenting the students with 10 articles of variable quality and having an exercise in identifying and discussing their merits/flaws would help students learn not just what to do, but also what not to do. Once the students have a feel for this, you can introduce complete freedom of choice for articles.

[Corribus]

Unfortunately learning to write well starts a lot earlier than graduate school - and I refer not only to grammar and syntax. Being able to organize thoughts into a logical framework is a skill that needs to be developed early on - elementary school and maybe even earlier. Writing a scientific report is not so different from writing any other kind of story. I do get amazed how many papers come across my desk in the review stages that seem to be technically sound but can't convey an overall picture or cohesive argument.

That's not to say that exposing undergrads to primary literature is pointless - far from it - but don't expect it to turn poor science writers into excellent ones in a single semester. Or ever. I will likely help the students who have a solid foundation in writing. To the rest it might just prove frustrating because they won't understand why they aren't succeeding. As an instructor you'll probably just have to accept that there's not much you can do for them.

[mikasaur]

Let me start by saying I like this idea. I think there are specifics that can be worked out, especially as you try it out on students, but I like the idea, generally.

...Maybe presenting the students with 10 articles of variable quality and having an exercise in identifying and discussing their merits/flaws would help students learn not just what to do, but also what not to do. Once the students have a feel for this, you can introduce complete freedom of choice for articles.

This was going to be one of my suggestions after reading the original assignment proposal. With the sheer number of potential articles they could suffer from analysis paralysis. If you help by curating a selection of articles to pick and choose from (perhaps some especially good and some especially bad) I can see the exercise going better for them. You can even pick things that they'd have an easier time understanding, or better yet easier articles on subjects they're currently learning about! Then they can focus on the actual style and approach to writing and how well the content is presented rather than expending energy trying to find articles that they can only somewhat understand.

I have the Chemistry education level of a frosh undergrad and I know I have a really hard time understanding the articles that my PhD girlfriend brings home. It's hard for me to say which articles are well-written and which aren't because my understanding of the subject is shallow.

Every (other) week might also be an aggressive pace when you add this to the concepts they're supposed to be learning. Experimenting with that would be interesting. Though giving them a curated list of articles does make this assignment substantially easier.

[kriggy]

Also, articles dont need to be difficult. If you want to put the time into it, you might find lots of them that are short and the chemistry is close to the one that is taught in orgchem courses (especialy just modifications that make the reaction whateverselective or use different reagents that are described in the course)