Science:Science Writing Resources/Strategies for Teaching Writing

Effective versus Ineffective Writing Prompts

Effective versus Ineffective Writing Prompts

Providing students with effective writing prompts can sometimes be tricky, because it can be difficult to outline exactly what you would like students to demonstrate in their writing assignments. Instructors should select priorities when designing prompts so as to make sure students have the opportunity to address specific learning objectives¹. When it comes to “effective” and “ineffective” topics, it’s more a question of how specific a topic is and how clearly the outcomes of the project are presented to students. For example, a project designed to get students to use sources in a way that is appropriate to science writing can be about almost any topic. In any case, you must clearly communicate the purpose and goals of the assignment to students.

Socio-scientific issues (e.g. meat consumption, or smoking restrictions in public) are especially useful topics to ask students to explore via prompts², because these are typically engaging and don't necessarily lend themselves to right or wrong answers. They thus allow students to write expository, narrative or persuasive pieces, which means they can be framed around virtually any assignment. Instructors might consider socio-scientific prompts that are geographically or culturally relevant, so that their students are likely to have an interest in them. Similarly, other research has shown that student motivation may increase if the assignment is relevant to the real world, the audience is well defined, and students are allowed to explore and express multiple opinions³.

Remember that however well defined a prompt is, students will still need explicit instruction to help them develop the writing skills needed to answer it effectively. For example, lab reports can help students develop content knowledge and see the value in their laboratory work⁴, but the skills needed for that are very different to those needed to excel in persuasive/argumentative science writing⁵. Well-defined prompts for these two tasks only go so far. Scaffolded writing tasks, where many smaller tasks together form one larger writing task, can offer the best means of developing writing skills, and at each stage it is important to design prompts that challenge students to ask questions, and then seek and translate material to support their writing⁶.

Determining the desired outcome of the project

When designing your writing assignments make sure you consider the desired learning outcome(s). To narrow the goal of a given assignment, consider the following questions:

1. What do you want students to learn or be able to do as a result of the project?

What is the goal of the assignment?
Is this a more basic (understanding) assignment, or one that poses a conceptual question, or asks students to solve a problem?
Is the focus on a specific topic or a broader one?
Do you want students to write a persuasive, argumentative, journalistic, etc. paper?
Do you want students to learn how to cite and use sources correctly?

2. What knowledge do you want students to demonstrate?

Do you want them to gain new knowledge or use existing knowledge? That is, do you want students to use something they have learned in class specifically, or do you want them to discover something through research?
Do you want them to focus on grammatical techniques, style (active and passive voice), or on the scientific content more than specific writing skills/strategies?
Which writing strategies from the lessons do you want students to use in the assignment (all of the strategies you have gone over, or focus on one or a few things)?

3. How do you want students to think about the topic or desired outcome?

What would you like students to be thinking about as they do their assignment? Think about…, Imagine that…, You are the researcher, your objective is to find…, etc.
How can you lead them to the final destination?
Do you want them to research ideas through articles or do you want them to be more creative?
Do you want them to focus on topics that appeal to them personally, or are you guiding the direction they will explore?

Communicating to students

As an instructor, it is critical that you present the information and outcomes in the simplest way possible. Your students will not only appreciate the simplicity but will also engage in the assignment at a higher level. When presenting the instructions for the project, be sure to avoid lengthy and wordy descriptions.

Although you want to avoid long descriptions that are difficult to read, it is necessary to include relevant details for project completion. It is very effective to include a goal for the project and to make a list of what the assignment is expected to address and include. It is also important to provide task-specific learning goals at each stage of a scaffolded assignment so that students can focus on the skills required as they take each step⁷.

The expectations of the assignment must be clearly communicated for students to monitor their own progress. Often, misleading or confusing instructions can throw students in the wrong direction. If you simply outline what is expected, students have a guideline to follow.

Incorporating grading criteria goes hand in hand with your assignment expectations. This is another way that students can see if their paper is following what the assignment is designed to achieve. Additionally, it allows students to ask questions if they are unsure of the grading process. For more information on creating rubrics and grading criteria, please see our ‘Grading Techniques’ resources.

Some Examples

The following examples show examples of “ineffective” instructions before revised versions that provide “effective” instructions. These provide examples of how you can improve existing writing prompts.

“Ineffective” writing prompts:

Should conservation organizations run campaigns for popular animals, such as polar bears, even though current climate predictions suggest their habitat will continue to shrink in the next 50 years?
Use a literature search tool to help write a review of recent progress in the field of immunology.

Now we will take a look at some improvements made to the above instructions. Compare these ineffective writing prompts to those below.

“Effective” writing prompts:

Should conservation organizations run campaigns for popular animals, such as polar bears, even though current climate predictions suggest their habitat will continue to shrink in the next 50 years?

Be sure to assess both sides of this argument, and use primary sources to provide some evidence to the reasons you use. Make sure you conclude by taking a stance, and providing a logical explanation for that stance. You will be graded on content (60%), logical development (20%) and organization and grammar (20%).

Use a literature search tool to help write a review of recent progress in the field of immunology.

Try to incorporate at least five recent primary sources that you have found using Google Scholar or Web of Science, and at the end, include the search terms and any advanced settings that you used to find these sources. Explain how you decided to focus on one specific area of immunology research. Try to write this review with a non-specific audience in mind (minimize your use of jargon and highlight why such research is important for society).

The writing prompts above clearly address a desired goal and specifically outline the knowledge that students will need to demonstrate. It is easy to see where students are led with these assignments.

Anticipating students’ questions and concerns

Another important part of giving writing prompts is being prepared for what students might ask about the assignment. Knowing this should help you to prepare students for what they might need to know, while using past experience with the same or similar projects can help determine the additional information that students will need.

Make sure you present the assignment information in class so that students can ask for clarification right away if necessary. This will also reduce your need to respond to similar questions from different students outside of class time; if one person is confused about something it is likely that at least one other person will share this confusion, so answering questions in a class setting should clarify things for many students.

To minimize student confusion when presenting the assignment, it is best to effectively break the assignment down into steps/checkpoints. This is a way students can visually see what they need to include in their assignment. Having checkpoints allows students to follow a time line or path when completing the project.

An example

The following set of activities is taken from one of our Lessons and Workshops (Summarizing Journal Articles). Note how each question breaks a bigger task (summarizing a journal article) into smaller elements, as well as outlining to the students how they will be graded for each element.

The final question then asks students to go about the bigger task (summarizing a journal article) with new material only after they have gained the experience of doing it step by step.

Summarizing Journal Articles: Student Pre-Class Activity - Version 1

Summarizing information is one of the most important skills to learn. Turning complex material into a form that makes it more readable for others requires similar skills to paraphrasing and using quotations effectively. However, there are some subtle but very important differences. These pre-class activities have been designed to give you practice in distinguishing these, as well as ensuring you write a summary of a recent peer-reviewed journal article that interests you. You must bring your summary and the journal article to the in-class activities for this writing skills unit.

You may have already learned how to paraphrase material from its source by making it more concise and putting it into your own words. When writing a summary, you should do exactly the same thing, except you should make it considerably shorter than its original form and focus only on the very important information. When you work with scientific journal articles, it can be initially difficult to distinguish which pieces of information are very important from those that are less important, because every article contains so much information. These activities should help you develop strategies for making this distinction.

The Key Elements

Every journal article is different, but as a general guide, you should read each one and make notes with the following questions in mind:

What problem/question does this research consider?
Why is this problem/question important/interesting?
What methods were used (in general)?
What were the main findings?
What evidence is provided to support the main findings?

Questions 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 (2 marks each, 10 marks total)

For each of the following five questions, you will need to refer to the fictional abstract that appears below (it is deliberately not concise and features complex words and jargon that would be typical of a journal abstract). When you summarize an article, it is important that you read the whole article (and not just the abstract), but for this exercise, a smaller body of text will be sufficient. As you read it, try to think about what the really important information is.

We conducted a 261-day research project to assess whether there was a link between exam performance in science courses and the happiness of students in these courses. We used the responses of 1,046 undergraduate students, who volunteered and were from different economic and social backgrounds, to answer this research question. Students were asked to answer a 15-question survey that had been previously validated by other researchers, and was therefore reliable, immediately after sitting their final exam in a science communication course. Survey questions were comprised of statements about happiness and wellbeing, such as: “I wake up feeling positive every morning,” and “I laugh at least 10 times a day,”. Students then had the option of answering these questions on a five-point Likert scale (with 1 representing ‘strongly disagree’ and 5 representing ‘strongly agree’). We split students into three groups based on their exam scores; one group contained students that scored As, one contained students that scored Bs and Cs, and one contained students that scored Ds or lower. We then took averages of questionnaire responses from these students and ran Bonferroni-corrected T-tests to ascertain whether there were significant differences between groups. We found that there was no difference in happiness between students that scored As and those that scored Bs and Cs (T=1.17, p=0.39), but students that scored Ds or lower were less happy than students in the other two groups (T=3.91, p=0.003, and T=4.71, p=0.0007). Social science researchers had long wondered whether students’ perceived happiness is affected by their exam performance but no studies had previously sought to address this conundrum experimentally. We propose that happiness is directly affected by exam performance in undergraduate science students, but that this is only true when students achieve grades of D or less. Students that achieve Cs or above, traditionally seen as passing grades, do not appear to be affected by the extent to which they differ from their peers, so long as they also achieve Cs or above. As a next step, we would like to devise experiments to tease apart the cause and effect relationship here; we still do not know whether students perform less well on exams because they are unhappy in other areas of their lives, or if students are unhappy because they perform less well than they hope on these exams.

Now, for the following five questions, copy and paste the complete sentence in the abstract that contains the answer (1 mark). Then, try to summarize this information for each question by writing it in your own words. Write it more concisely and use less specific detail (1 mark). Hint: Think hard about whether you need specific information to provide an accurate summary answer to each question and do not include it if it is unnecessary. We have not worked with interpreting statistics before, but in most circumstances (such as this one) you can assume it is safe not to include specific numbers, but you should say whether or not the statistics provided evidence for any conclusions made by the authors.

* As you work through questions 1 - 5, keep a copy of your answers in another file. You will need to paste the combined answers into Connect for Question 6. *

Q1: What problem/question does this research consider?
Q2: Why is this problem/question important/interesting?
Q3: What methods were used (in general)?
Q4: What were the main findings?
Q5: What evidence is provided to support the main findings?

Question 6 (5 marks)

Imagine that you have summarized 10 papers in the same way as you have just done for the fictional abstract above, and that you now want to summarize everything into one piece of writing (perhaps you were writing a review of all the studies that relate to happiness and academic performance, for example). This will mean summarizing everything again, which means removing any information from each one that is not vital or very interesting.

Copy and paste all your summarized answers to questions 1 – 5 together to form one summary paragraph. When you read it, this might seem as though you have paraphrased rather than summarized the material. To rectify this, re-write your summary more succinctly (1 mark). Try to remove any redundant or uninteresting information (2 marks), and make sure it all transitions smoothly from sentence to sentence (2 marks). Hint: You might wish to re-order the sentences to make the summary more interesting and/or succinct. We have not worked with interpreting statistics before, but in most circumstances (such as this one) you can assume it is safe not to include specific numbers, but you should say whether or not the statistics provided evidence for any conclusions made by the authors.

Question 7 (5 marks)

Try to summarize a recent peer-reviewed journal article that interests you (this can be from any scientific discipline). In your summary, try to answer the five questions that appear in the ‘key elements’ section (above). Most importantly, try to write no more than 250 words, but do not worry too much about style just now. Although the content is very important, you will not be graded on this aspect yet.

* When you have completed your summary, copy and paste it and include a word count. Make sure you also save a copy for yourself. You will need to (1) print this, along with (2) a copy of the peer-reviewed journal article you used, and bring them both with you to participate in the in-class activities. In these activities, you will work with a partner to improve your summaries in terms of content and style. *

Communication Learning Objectives

Learning Objectives for Science Writing / Communication

There are a number of different categories of science writing/communication (such as academic and journalistic), and different skills are required for a certain proficiency in each. As a result, you may wish to design courses and their components to incorporate specific learning objectives, many of which appear in category-specific lists in this resource.

To distinguish between the different types of objectives, we have divided these up by category and then by their location within Bloom’s taxonomy^{1, 2}. Thinking about dividing learning objectives into Bloom's categories can help you design a course so as to align your teaching with assessments and to boost student metacognition. There are now discipline-specific tools to help you do this (e.g. the Blooming Biology Tool³).

If you are designing a new course, or thinking about re-designing an existing one, it can help to design it back to front by starting with the learning objectives and then considering which content to integrate to best help students to apply their knowledge and develop associated skills⁴. This can be difficult at first, but there are guides that help with this learning objective-centric design⁵.

We have developed learning objectives for a number of different science writing and science communication categories, including academic science communication and journalistic science communication aimed at lay audiences. Science communication now frequently takes place on Youtube, Facebook and via other social media platforms⁶. Sometimes there is no intermediary between the original author and his/her audience (e.g. blog posts) ⁷. As a result, designing learning objectives that expose students to these forms of science communication are likely to appeal to students and help them develop science communication skills that will be very useful.

As with all of our resources, we would love to hear your feedback, and would also like to hear about your own experiences in drawing up learning objectives for science writing and/or science communication courses. Perhaps you have objectives that you think we should incorporate? Please contact us here with your feedback.

General science communication:

Knowledge

Identify, and restate in your own words, the thesis statement in a piece of writing

Define the different types of plagiarism and avoid plagiarism

Identify different audiences of scientific information

Recognize when it is appropriate to use the different types of scientific literature such as primary literature, reviews, and textbooks

Know that there are many different, commonly used citation styles, and that these can be managed with a citation manager such as RefWorks

Understand

Discuss reasons scientists communicate (or should communicate) their work

Discuss the role of governments, industry, and other stakeholders in communicating science

Explain how scientific research is published (including the peer review process, open-access journals, and the embargo system)

Identify some common misconceptions of science

Explain what is at stake if scientific research/information is communicated poorly

Apply

Apply writing best practices regarding: clarity, succinct writing, topic sentences and paragraph structure, passive vs. active voice, metaphors, jargon

Avoid committing the different types of plagiarism in science writing

Locate relevant information in scientific publications

Apply different citation styles using citation manager software such as RefWorks

Analyze

Explain what is done well (and what isn’t) in examples of different styles of science writing

Evaluate

Give feedback on peers' writing

Decide what aspects of peer feedback to incorporate into your writing

Evaluate sources of scientific information possible origins of scientific misconceptions and how they might be addressed

Create

Organize scientific information from a variety of sources to produce different written work (research papers, essays, journalistic articles, blog posts etc.)

Academic science communication

Knowledge

Label the components of a scientific paper (IMRAD: intro, methods, results, and discussion)

Decide when it is appropriate to use the different types of scientific literature such as primary literature, reviews and textbooks

Identify the elements of an argument, claim and the interpretation of evidence that supports the claim

Identify thesis and development statements

Understand

Explain how scientific research is published (including the peer review process, open-access journals, and the embargo system)

Apply

Use online research tools (e.g. databases, e-journals, Google Scholar, Web of Science) to collect relevant information (e.g. scholarly articles, websites, blog posts) on a particular topic

Cite different types of scientific literature appropriately

Use an outline to organize a scientific argument with a claim and supporting evidence

Evaluate

Read scientific literature and assess the quality of the claims and evidence used to support them

Defend the validity of an argument by evaluating evidence in a variety of genres, including popular media, websites and scientific journals

Create

Write a scientific paper using the IMRAD structure

Write an argumentative essay using claims and evidence supported by scientific literature

Journalistic science communication, multimedia integration, and using digital tools

Knowledge

Define the characteristics of newsworthiness

Identify use of the inverted pyramid structure in journalistic writing

Identify the characteristics of a good opening paragraph (lead) --who, what, where, when, why, how

Recognize the role of the public affairs or communications offices in communicating science

Understand

Recognize the needs and limitations of people working in the media

Recognize, as scientists, that complexity must be sacrificed for clarity in some cases

Explain why it is important to use quotations more frequently than in academic science communication

Apply

Apply the inverted pyramid structure when writing press releases or journalistic articles

Use appropriate, interesting quotations when writing in journalistic style

Evaluate

Critically discuss the historical “two cultures” of science and journalism

Critically discuss how science communication is changing (online news, social media, citizen journalism, blogging, etc.) and how this affects the work of journalists, press officers, and other members of the media

Critically discuss how science communication is changing (online news, social media, citizen journalism, blogging, etc.) and how this affects the work of scientists

Critically examine best practice examples of science podcasts and videos

Create

Write a lead for an article about science that is intended for a non-expert audience

Write a blog post about scientific research in journalistic style (max 500 words) for a non-expert audience

Construct a production plan for a multimedia project that reports on a current piece of scientific research

Conduct an on-camera interview with a researcher

Create detailed scripts, including narration and shot lists, for a short video and podcast based on an interview with a researcher

Produce a short podcast about a current piece of scientific research

Produce a short video about a current piece of scientific research

Contribute posts and comments to the course blog

Scientific presentations, and visual materials:

Knowledge

Identify the appropriate amount – and type – of content

Understand

Identify key points from a presentation

Describe the most common practices for visually reporting statistical and other scientific information

Apply

Apply oral presentation best practices: eye contact, pace, gesture, content, visual aids, rehearsing

When appropriate, incorporate presentation techniques such as humour, metaphor, comparisons, and analogies

Incorporate graphics and multimedia elements into presentations

Represent data in logical and clear tables and graphs

Analyze

Analyze risk communication in the context of scientific data and non-expert audiences

Evaluate

Ask and answer questions after viewing presentations

Evaluate visual representations of scientific information

Evaluate the reporting of statistical ideas

Create

Deliver an oral presentation using no visual aids (a speech) that is clear, audible, well rehearsed, and suitable for the audience

Deliver an oral presentation using visual aids (a speech) that is clear, audible, well rehearsed, and suitable for the audience

Deliver a presentation using software (such as PowerPoint, Keynote, Prezi) that is clear, audible, well rehearsed, and suitable for the audience

How to Offer Strategic Feedback

Effective Feedback

The most helpful feedback for writers (students) offers observations on what the student has done in the assignment and explains how the student’s choices affected their reader(s). Asking questions and offering advice for creating the desired effect(s) will help the student improve their written communication, while helping to avoid an emotional reaction.

The most effective writing feedback isn’t evaluative – it doesn’t focus on whether the work was “good” or “bad”, or let the student know whether you liked or didn’t like their work. These types of comments can cause students to become defensive or react emotionally in other ways, which is more likely to prevent them from processing comments productively. Negative comments can even shatter self-esteem and belief¹. In all cases, feedback should provide little threat to a student at the self level².

For example (less effective):

“I liked the first paragraph, but your definition of behavioural ecology wasn’t as good as it could have been. You can make it better by providing more detail.”

Compared to (more effective):

“In your first paragraph, you offered the context that a layperson/casual reader would need in order to understand behavioural ecology. The actual definition of the concept you offered reads like a dictionary definition and doesn’t explain the jargon used. If your intended audience is the layperson, this could be confusing to them and could make them assume that they need some specialist knowledge to understand the rest of the paper. How have you seen other popular science writers address this in their work? Which strategies can you employ?”

Specific Direction

When choosing what to comment on, think about the goals you have for your students and for their writing. Do you primarily want them to be able to demonstrate their understanding of material, or to communicate clearly? Focusing your feedback on the main goal will unify your comments, while keeping students on track to deliver according to your expectations in future assignments. Students also prefer feedback to be specific and timely, and to be especially supportive at an early stage of their learning experience³.

Whether or not you use a rubric to guide your feedback, focusing on helping students to achieve one clear goal per assignment will help them improve their writing in a meaningful, achievable way.

Teaching Students About Feedback

Research shows that students often fail to understand the feedback points that instructors and tutors raise⁴, which is why engaging in dialogue after providing feedback is important. Students should not see feedback as being a one-way conversation, and engaging in dialogue can help them see the value in it⁵. With this in mind, it is important to fully explain the purpose, benefit and meaning of written feedback⁶ (e.g. outline that feedback is intended to help students develop their skills by providing ideas that will help them do so). Many instructors even devote some class time to teaching students how they want them to view the feedback process, and how they want them to respond⁷.

Do’s and Don’ts for Offering Feedback

✓Include at least one genuinely positive piece of feedback, if possible. Although you are not commenting on what you like or don’t like, letting a student know what they do well is just as important as letting them know where to improve. Offering a strategy for students to use this strength in other types of writing is also a good idea.

✓Include a referral to any of the support services that would be useful for students, even if they don’t need remediation – support services on campus are designed to work with students at all levels and it is important that students know help is available.

✓Encourage students to set a writing goal for their next project that takes into account the feedback you offered this time around.

✓Ensure that your feedback is easy for students to understand and relates to something they can take direct action on. For example, instead of explaining the uses of commas and semicolons, let students know that they can have more of an impact on their readers by varying sentence length and structure.

✓Give your students a set of questions for self-evaluation of their future drafts based on what they did well and didn’t do well in their current assignment. This can be prepared ahead of time and used with all students.

✕Don’t mark up a student’s entire paper. This is overwhelming and can cause students to shut down and stop reading; it is also counter-productive, as it doesn’t make them look critically and carefully at their own writing and errors/patterns of error.

Instead, mark a paragraph or two in which both the content and mechanics/grammar/syntax/etc. could be improved, and focus your comments on the content, clarity, and other higher order concerns throughout the paper.
Make the bulk of your comments in the end notes, focusing your in-text comments on things that illustrate the points you make in these end notes.

✕Don’t focus on grammar. Point errors out in a couple of places and ask the student to find/correct the rest.

Instead of focusing on grammar rules, focus on clarity and understanding in your comments (even if a student’s grammar impedes their meaning). When offering a referral to a support service, remember that a student’s applied grammar often differs from their understanding of the rules. It is rarely useful for a student who struggles with grammar-related clarity to review rules and do worksheets.
Instead, pointing them to resources that will help them contextualize their learned/internalized grammar rules will help. Keeping the focus on clarity helps students avoid frustration and keep their audience, not the rules of grammar, in mind. This is especially helpful for students who speak different forms of English (UK etc.), where the grammatical structures differ from Standard American English.
If a student’s grammar impedes their meaning, it is still a good idea to focus on the importance of clarity in communication rather than on grammar itself. Do offer the student a referral to the appropriate service (writing centre, English language support program, learning commons, etc.).

Managing Your Time When Offering Feedback

To save time when offering feedback, you can employ strategies such as using a rubric, creating scripts, and holding back the temptation to comment on everything in a student’s paper. Focusing on one goal and including no more than 2-3 categories of comments (organization, focus, grammar/mechanics, etc.) will save you time and keep your students from getting overwhelmed. Remember, more feedback/comments isn’t necessarily better for students’ learning. Keeping a list of campus resources to refer students to will make the process faster, as well.

Using Peer Review

Peer Review

Peer review is a natural fit for science communication settings, because it is such a vital component of the scientific publishing process. Thus, involving students in peer review may not only improve students’ writing, but also their understanding of science. Peer review can also help to make students more responsible and reflective when it comes to their written work¹.

When incorporating writing tasks into science classes, one of the main concerns educators have is the time required to grade and provide effective feedback. This is a greater concern with large classes. If your goal is to provide multiple writing opportunities to students to allow them to practice their writing skills, you may want to consider using peer evaluation to reduce the grading burden. However, it is important to be aware that some students can be mistrusting of peer review, thinking that it places their grades in the hands of unqualified peers ². To reduce the likelihood of your students thinking this, it is important to explain the many positive outcomes that should result from them engaging with peer review.

In this guide, we consider some of the challenges and best practice strategies, before focusing specifically on using peer review to provide students with formative feedback and for grading purposes.

Incorporating Peer Review into Your Class

Some of the greater concerns about incorporating peer review into a science class are highlighted below (Table 1), but you can employ the strategies matched with these to negate or offset them.

Table 1: Best Practice Strategies to Deal with Specific Peer Review Implementation Concerns

Concern/Issue – How to…	Associated Best Practice Strategy
Organize the distribution of student work to peers	Consider using a software system Ensure friends/group members receive work from other individuals/groups
Communicate instructions and feedback	Consider running a practice session first [see our guide and materials here] Provide guidelines with sample language Provide a rubric or detailed list of tasks
Motivate students to take the task seriously	Provide an incentive (small initially, rising in value with experience) as part of a grade Provide a bigger incentive for a second draft of work (after peer review)
Motivate students to incorporate peer feedback into their edits
Decide whether reviews should be anonymous	Judge the dynamic of your class In most cases, face-to-face interviews can clarify confusion and do not cause problems

Using Peer Review for Formative Assessment

Some specific strategies and things to consider that may help you handle peer review and address related concerns in your class include how you will:

Communicate the purpose of the activity with students to gain their support. Obviously, it is not a good idea to suggest that the students are “doing your work for you”. Instead, highlight the benefits of reading and critically analyzing other’s work. Discuss how being a peer reviewer will help them understand grading criteria better and spot weaknesses in writing structure and argumentation, which will in turn help improve their own work³. Emphasize how important it is for people to get feedback on their writing during the revision stage, and that you are helping facilitate that for the entire class.
Provide an appropriate incentive to students to encourage them to take the review process seriously. Depending on your class size, you may not have the resources to grade students’ reviews of each other’s work. However, you could set aside a component of the assignment grade to be determined by student perception of how useful the peer review is in helping them revise their work.
Train students on providing effective feedback ⁴. You may want to provide detailed guidance in the form of a checklist or rubric so that students know exactly what they should be considering when reviewing someone else’s work or at least provide prompts to make sure they pay attention to important elements of their peers' writing^{5, 6}.
Decide how many assignments to ask students to review. If they review two or more assignments, they can compare and contrast them as well as receive a wider range of feedback on their own work. Sometimes comparing different pieces of work helps students provide more objective feedback because they are better able to assess the strengths and weaknesses of writing when they see more than one example. While some research suggests students hold positive attitudes towards peer review after the purpose has been explained ⁷, other work shows that students trust the process more as they get more experience of it ⁸. As a result, incorporating more than one round of peer review should increase the chances that you students will have greater faith in what they are doing, and why they are being asked to do it.
Decide whether to include a face-to-face discussion to go along with the paper-based or software-based reviews. It can be useful for students to hear directly from their peers about what was unclear and excellent about their writing assignment. Face-to-face discussions allow for clarification and may even lead to paired brainstorming about revisions. Of course, this would mean that reviews are not anonymous, but there is little evidence that suggests blinding peer reviews is more useful to learners.
Encourage students to incorporate their reviewers’ comments into their work. You may want to have students write a cover page, similar to a letter to the editor of a journal, discussing how they incorporated their reviewers’ comments so that they must tackle this task.
Organize the logistics of the whole process. Software systems can do just this. These tools will greatly reduce the burden of organizing the reviews if you have a large class.

An Example of Peer Review in Communicating Science (SCIE 300) at UBC

Here we describe an example of how peer review is used in a third-year communicating science class at our institution. Students work individually to prepare a research paper written in scientific journal style. Their papers are based on a small-scale scientific investigation they performed in groups of 3-4. Four days after the draft papers are due as submissions to the course learning management system, students bring two copies of their paper to class. While students are working on an in-class activity, the instructor distributes the papers to the reviewers. We make sure that students in the same group are not assigned to review each other’s work and ensure that the review class peer discussions will be able to occur without anyone being left out of the discussion.

We give students a rubric and ask them, as homework, to mark up the papers as needed. Four days later, we pair students up in class to discuss their reviews. Each pair has ten minutes to discuss one paper, and then they switch.

The key features that make this process run smoothly are:

Students are accountable and therefore invested in the process because they need to submit their draft online before coming to class. There are a few buffer days for late submissions.
We provide a rubric to guide students’ reviews.
We provide guidance about exactly what the pairs should be discussing.

Do you have examples of effective peer review that you would like to share? Please contact us here if so.

Using Peer Review for Grading Purposes

While having students grade each other’s work can be a time-saving measure, it takes time and thought to incorporate peer evaluation into your class successfully. Here we describe some best practices to consider before implementing peer evaluation with your students. Benefits to peer evaluation include increased responsibility and autonomy, improvement in critical thinking, and improvement of structured thinking.

Many of the same considerations must be given when using peer review for grading purposes as for formative purposes (discussed above). However, there are some additional things to consider, and these are listed below:

1. As above (in the Using Peer Review for Formative Assessment section), it is not a good idea to suggest that the students are “doing your work for you”. Instead highlight the benefits of reading and critically analyzing others’ work.

Be aware that that some students may have negative perceptions of peer evaluation and perceive it as unfair (Smith et al. 2002, Kaufman and Schunn 2011). However, these perceptions may change positively as a result of participating in peer evaluation (Wen and Tsai 2006), so it is important to ensure that students get something positive from their first experiences of the process.

2. As above, it is important to provide an incentive to students to encourage them to take the grading process seriously.

However…

3. It is very important to limit the peer evaluation component of the students’ overall course grades to reduce the perception that their grade is mostly left up to a non-expert or to chance. This is critical when you are piloting peer evaluation in your class.

 4. Be sure to have a plan in place for how to deal with student complaints. You may want to set up a formal grievance process.

5. Consider whether your peer evaluation is going to be anonymous or not. Most of the software systems below are anonymous. If not anonymous, consider how you will deal with conflicts of interest, such as two best friends being assigned to each other’s work.

Using Software or Calibrated Peer Review Software Systems

What follows is a brief overview of software systems you may want to consider. The benefit of using a software program to handle peer evaluation is that they can simplify the logistics of assigning, collecting, and returning grades, and providing feedback. Using these systems requires a considerable initial time commitment to set up the assignment and grading rubric(s), but the time savings come later when they construct grades for you and provide feedback directly to students. It is also very important to ensure you make it clear to your students that any software systems used for peer review offer learning benefits to them ⁹, as well as smoothing the assignment logistics for you.

Calibrated Peer Review. The CPR software was created at UCLA and takes users through a sequence of submitting their own work, training on grading other’s work (“calibration”) and grading their peer’s work. There is a bank of assignments and it is easy to create your own. Check out the extensive list of publications on the CPR website.
iPeer (UBC). iPeer is an open-source web-based software application that allows instructors to create assignments and rubrics, send reminders to students, and provide feedback. Evaluations can be based on rubrics, and the system can be used for evaluating the contributions of group members in team projects.
PeerMark (Turnitin). This component of Turnitin distributes student work for peer grading according to instructor-given criteria. Reviewers may comment and add editing remarks. Your institution may have a license with Turnitin, and it may be integrated with your learning management system (LMS). At UBC, Turnitin is not integrated with the LMS because Turnitin stores the data in the United States. Be sure only anonymous student work is uploaded to Turnitin if your institution is in Canada.
MyWritingLab (Pearson). This proprietary software allows for “facilitated peer review”, which means that students may provide comments on other students’ work, as well as grade it using an instructor-provided rubric.
Peerceptiv (formerly SWoRD Peer Assessment). Peerceptiv engages students in double-blind reviews using instructor-created rubrics. This system claims to motivate students, eliminate bias, and generate useful analytics for instructors. Student work is graded by three to six peers and students have the opportunity to “back evaluate” to rate the helpfulness and specificity of the review. SWoRD has been heavily researched by the University of Pittsburgh and is offered by Panther Learning.

Do you have other examples of peer evaluation software that you have had success with? Please contact us here if so.

Useful References

1. Dochy, F, Segers, M, Sluijsmans, D. The use of self-, peer and co-assessment in higher education: A review. Stud High Educ. 1999; 24(3):331–350.

2. Kaufman, JH, Schunn, CD. Students’ perceptions about peer assessment for writing: their origin and impact on revision work. Instr Sci. 2011; 39:387-406.

3. Cho, YH, Cho, K. Peer reviewers learn from giving comments. Instr Sci. 2011; 39:629-643.

4. Stanley, J. Coaching student writers to be effective peer evaluators. J Sec Lang Writ. 1992; 1(3):217-233.

5. Cho, K, Schunn, CD, Wilson, RW. Validity and reliability of scaffolded peer assessment of writing from instructor and student perspectives. 'J Educ Psych. 2006; 98(4):891-901.

6. Gan, MJS, Hattie, J. Prompting secondary students' use of criteria, feedback specificity and feedback levels during an investigative task. Instr Sci. 2014; 42:861-878.

7. Keaten, JA, Richardson, ME. A field investigation of peer assessment as part of the student group grading process, paper presented at the Western Speech Communication Association Convention. 1992; (pp. 1–34). Presented at the Western Speech Communication Association Convention, Albuquerque.

8. Smith, H, Cooper, A, Lancaster, L. Improving the quality of undergraduate peer assessment: A case for student and staff development. Innov Educ Teach Int. 2002; 39(1):71–81.

9. Wen, ML, Tsai, CC. University students’ perceptions of and attitudes toward (online) peer assessment. High Educ. 2006; 27(18):27–44.

The Giving Effective Feedback - Peer Review - Student Handout

Giving Effective Feedback – Peer Review

Tips and Example Feedback

Try to follow some of these tips when giving feedback to your peer(s), and always try to imagine things from their perspective; ask yourself whether your peer(s) will be able to use your feedback to improve their writing.

1. Be supportive as well as honest

“This paragraph confuses me because…”
“You have an interesting detail here that I almost missed because…”
“Your opening thesis statement told me exactly what you were going to argue, but the logic of your argument was hard to follow because…”

2. Be specific (why is something confusing?)

“This word means something different to me because…”
“I am not sure which example you are referring to here because…”
“This sentence might be clearer if you wrote it in the active voice because…”

3. Write comments on the draft and use additional paper if you need to

Make sure these comments are specific and easy to interpret
Try not to edit someone’s work; instead, tell them how they can edit it
Use a coding system to highlight related errors/issues (e.g. circles around tense issues, underline sections where the logic doesn’t flow…)

4. Keep feedback confidential

5. Focus on the paper, not the person

6. Use plenty of “I” statements to de-personalize your feedback (rather than “You” statements, which can make people uncomfortable)

“At this point, I thought the essay was going to next consider…”
“I would probably find this section easier to understand if…”
“I like the way this point is connected to the next one, and would find the argument easier to follow if all the points were connected like this…”

7. Provide suggestions rather than commands

“Consider moving this point up one paragraph so that it follows on directly from this point…”
“I think this section would be easier to read if it was written in the active voice…”
“It might be worth finding another example that provides support for this claim to make the argument more convincing…”

Essay For Feedback - Peer Review Exercise

Should limited research funds be allocated to basic or applied research projects?

Scientific research can be conducted as basic or applied, basic research is more general and includes learning about topics such as insect behaviour whereas applied research is instead performed with a more specific goal in mind to solve particular problems such as how to prevent the spread of malaria with different kinds of drugs in areas affected by malaria. Both research types are different but both are important for improve human quality of life.

Basic research is very important becase without building a foundation of knowledge it is very hard to tackle specific problems in the world. For example, basic research like people investigating the manifold ways in which chemical compounds react and bind with one another in solutions and how these ways are affected by the molecular structure of the compounds is very important. Deadly diseases have been responsible for huge numbers of deaths in years gone by but the field of medicine has successfully developed medicines that treat and cure many of these. All treatments must be tested carefully in applied testing trials before it is used to save lives, however it is very rare that it could be developed at all without there being prior knowledge about how it might be made to specifically tackle the disease agent which is why it is so important to have deon the initial applied work. So it is very important that basic research is performed, that can show things such as in what conditions the drug might be good, whether there might be similar compounds from other sources that might do the same thing etc. Applied research builds on this detailed, broad knowedge in a more specific way. A good example is that knowledge of the molecular structure of certain compounds can be used by those with a mind to work out why they might react different in different environments. If certain compounds reacted differently with water than with dry earths then agriculturalists might research different mixes of compounds used as fertilisers to be used by farmers in different environments that are wet or dry. So they might predict and be right that one is more useful in the pacific northwest than in California and arizona and save money and produce more crops in the two regions. Basic research does often enhance knowledge that can be used to solve problems in an unexpected way too though, and this is a major reason why it is very important to improve science as a whole. For example, scientists performed basic research into the way that sharks skin cells aligned with each other after they noticed how rough they felt to the touch. Further down the line, unrelated research teams used the data to perform applied research and design clothing materials for people working in harsh enivieonrments like extremely cold places or where there is a need to not tear clothing like in a building where corrosive or poisonous solutions will be regularly used.

To summarize, I think that basic and applied research are both important and scientists should continue to work at both types so that more general and specific discoveries can be made to significantly improve the quality of life that we as people will enjoy because if only one type of research had been performed in the past we might not have done many important things such as reduced the spread of malaria, investigated the likelihood of life existing on Mars, or even invented the iPad.

Peer Review Rubric

PEER REVIEW ASSIGNMENT – RUBRIC

Author’s Name: __________________

Your Name: __________________

Instructions to author: When the peer review begins, take notes. These notes are for your own benefit when revising and do not need to be submitted. Listen to your peer and avoid getting defensive or apologizing.

Instructions to peer reviewer: Read this peer review form first, and then read your peer’s paper. You can make annotations on the paper, and/or on this form. The paper’s author will keep this form and the annotated paper. You will also have the chance to present your comments, clarify your points and make suggestions during a conversation with your peer.

Identify the paragraph or section of the paper that you think is most effective, and draw a box around it. For this section of the paper, please answer the following questions: 1) What makes this section the most effective? Be specific in your answer. 2) What is the role of this section in helping you understand the science that the author is reporting?

Identify the paragraph or section of the paper that you think is least effective, and draw a circle around it. For this section of the paper, please answer the following questions:
	Yes	Somewhat	No
Does this section advance the point the author is trying to make?
Is the content of the section problematic?
Is the organization of the section problematic?
Is the writing in this section problematic?
Provide suggestions for improvement of this section. Make a minimum of one suggestion.

If the paper includes errors in any of the following, circle it here and on the paper draft. Try to include helpful comments about the errors.
topic sentences	colon
paragraph structure	semicolon
active & passive voice	capitals
numbers/units	apostrophe
comma	hyphen
plurals	abbreviation/acronym

Keeping in mind the target audience, answer the following questions:
	Yes	Somewhat	No
Is the tone of the paper appropriate?
Is the level of scientific knowledge required of the reader appropriate?
Is the technical language appropriate (e.g. too much jargon)?
Are headings used logically to divide up the paper?
Are there any instances of awkward or ambiguous wording?
Is the paper largely free of grammatical or spelling errors?

Check individual parts of paper and flag problem areas:
	Yes	Somewhat	No
Abstract: Are the core contents of the paper concisely described?
Introduction: Is the rationale or motivation explained?
Introduction: Is sufficient background provided for the study?
Methods: Is there enough detail to allow another scientist to repeat the study?
Results: Are the results presented in a clearly organized manner?
Discussion: Are the findings accurately interpreted? i.e. are there errors in the science?
Discussion: Are interesting implications of the findings described?
Discussion: Is each conclusion supported by sufficient evidence (data, examples)?
Discussion: Are limitations or remaining questions assessed?
Figures/Tables: Do these improve the readability of the paper?
If you answered ‘No’ to any of the above, provide the author a brief explanation below.

Use this space to make additional comments about formatting or style and/or to note concerns you have about this paper not meeting the expectations or goals of the assignment.

Choosing and Using Sample Texts

Introduction

Scientific ideas can be expressed in many different written formats, ranging from academic journal articles, to lab reports and essays, to news stories in magazines and newspapers. One of the best strategies for helping students understand and master how to write effectively in all these different formats is using sample texts as illustrative examples. As examples, sample texts can serve not only to demonstrate specific writing rules and conventions, but also to familiarize students with what good and bad writing looks like. Careful and strategic selection of sample texts can benefit both learners and educators.

Using Sample Texts to Teach Genre-Specific Writing
It can be particularly helpful to use sample texts when instructing students on how to write in a specific genre.

Genre is a term for grouping texts together. It represents the typical way that writers use language to respond to recurring situations ^{1, 2}. Both a social and cognitive concept, genre is defined by the rules and expectations for communication that its writers and readers adhere to. With this definition in mind, different types of science writing can be viewed as being parts of different genres. For example, a journal article reporting on original research would be part of one genre, while a lab report would be part of another. As a result, principles for teaching genre writing can be applied to teaching science writing.

Ecocomposition theory³ is also useful, as it considers how student writers learn about discipline-specific writing by likening the process to operating in an ecosystem composed of textual forms, cultural norms, interpersonal interactions, purposes, and ideas. Science writers effectively enter their own ecosystem and begin to acknowledge the different interrelationships that exist. Texts -- and prompts from instructors and tutors -- that locate students contextually within the ecosystem are the best for developing the desired skills (e.g. texts that make students wonder what a researcher is trying to convey in a journal article, and why he/she is communicating in such a way, would help them to engage with their discipline more fully).

Current thinking suggests that writing tutors and instructors should focus on teaching genre more clearly instead of differentiating between teaching generalist and specialist writing skills⁴. Because all students should learn for themselves what it means to play a role in discipline-specific discourse, genre theory should also prove useful from a generalist and specialist perspective because it provides a tool to help with that discourse⁵.

The following strategies may prove helpful when using sample texts to help students work confidently and appropriately within a genre.

Strategy 1: Start by familiarizing students with the chosen genre

Before teaching students to effectively write within a given genre, it’s helpful to start with a solid understanding of the genre itself -- how it views the world and what it values as a result of that unique perspective.
Aim to familiarize students with the conventions and expectations of a genre, as well as more technical details such as the typical formats of communication, types of documents, citation styles, organization, and language.
Discuss students’ past experiences (if any) of writing in the chosen genre.
Provide a number of sample texts that are representative of writing from that genre.

Strategy 2: Compare and contrast writing in different genres

Discuss how writing in different genres differs in characteristics such as format, purpose, style, and audience. Use samples taken from different genres to illustrate these differences.
Discuss how writing in one genre can share similarities to writing in another genre. Also point out overarching features common to good science writing. Use supporting sample texts.
It may also be helpful to show the contrast in writing conventions that exists between sub-specialties of the same genre.

Strategy 3: Empower students to write confidently within a genre

Teaching how to write in different genres is also an opportunity to empower students to increase their sense of ownership over their writing. Often when students learn to adjust their writing to fit into a genre-specific style, they can feel like they have lost their individuality, or their voice is suppressed by the genre’s rules for writing.
To alleviate concerns about the rigidity of genre, encourage students to see writing in a genre as being akin to stepping into a new environment. Rather than seeing their writing as being isolated within a genre, help them to see it as part of an interactive web of other writing. Using sample texts can help reveal this related web by showing students how their work fits in with past work and work from other writers.
Another suggestion is to choose sample texts that intentionally deviate from the expectations of a genre, and discuss how this can be used for creative effect.

Practical Considerations when Choosing Appropriate Sample Texts

Ensure students have sufficient background to comprehend the material discussed in the samples.
Do not assume all students will recognize cultural, historical, or scientific references familiar to you.
Include multiple perspectives on a topic rather than focusing solely on a single perspective.
Examine course content regularly for samples that contain out-dated information.
Appropriately credit the source of the sample text.

Sources
1. Devet BD. Using Metagenre and Ecocomposition to Train Writing Center Tutors for Writing in the Disciplines. Praxis: A Writing Center Journal. 2014; 11(2).

2. Hyland K. Genre and academic writing in the disciplines. Lang Teach. 2008; 41(04), 543-562.

3. Dobrin SI, Weisser CR. Natural Discourse: Toward Ecocomposition. Albany, NY: State University of New York. 2002.

4. Gordon L M. Beyond Generalist vs. Specialist: Making Connections Between Genre Theory and Writing Center Pedagogy. Praxis: A Writing Center Journal. 2014; 11(2).

5. Walker K. The debate over generalist tutors: genre theory’s contribution. The Writ Cent J. 1998; 18(2):27-32.

Scaffolding and Process Pedagogy