Teaching science students to communicate - a teaching resource

This teaching resource contains five science communication activities, to be run in undergraduate science classes such as workshops, practicals, or tutorials. The skills taught in these activities are specifically for the communication of science to non-scientific audiences, although all skills are transferrable to other contexts – including communication with scientific audiences also. Activities have been designed to allow for discipline-specific science content to be integrated into, and taught alongside, the communication skills. All activities have been trialled and evaluated in undergraduate science courses across year levels and disciplines – for full details of evaluation see Mercer-Mapstone & Kuchel (2015). These skill have been derived from a thorough review of the literature across science, communication, science communication; and education, and validated by science communication and education experts to be relevant and essential within the context of undergraduate science. For details on the development of these communication skills, see Mercer-Mapstone & Kuchel (2015a)

Equity and diversity in institutional approaches student-staff partnership schemes in higher education

© 2019, © 2019 Society for Research into Higher Education. Student cohorts in higher education are rapidly diversifying. Approaches to student engagement in teaching and learning must evolve to meet the changing needs of these diverse groups of students equitably. Student–staff partnership is an approach to student engagement embracing the diverse experiences of both students and staff. Growing evidence shows significant positive outcomes for students and staff. Practice, however, is dominated by small scale initiatives, limiting opportunities for equitable engagement. In institutions where partnership has been scaled-up, little research has explored these institutional partnership schemes. Our research addresses this gap by exploring institutional approaches to partnership across 11 universities in the United Kingdom. Results provide important lessons for improving equity in access to partnership schemes and the need for broader conceptions of scaling up partnership

What’s in a Name? Unpacking Students’ Roles in Higher Education through Neoliberal and Social Justice Lenses

There has been an increase in research and practice exploring how students can gain agency to shape higher education experiences. Numerous terms evoking certain metaphors have entered the discussions around engaging students, from students as consumers or producers, to students as creators, partners, or change agents. There is scope within the evolving literature to explore the differentiations between these metaphors and how underlying assumptions ultimately shape our practices and research. We thus unpack the above five metaphors frequently used to redefine students’ roles in higher education. We then engage in a dialogue across differences: highlighting how our own two distinct perspectives on the research area and practice – grounded in neoliberalism and social justice – align, overlap, differ, and provide constraints or affordances for student engagement. We offer a critical and reflective commentary questioning the drivers of students’ changing roles in higher education in the hope of inviting others into generative dialogue toward expanding the evolving field of student engagement. </jats:p

PREPARING STUDENTS FOR UNCERTAINTY IN UNCERTAIN TIMES: CURRICULUM APPROACHES TO APPLYING DISCIPLINARY KNOWLEDGE IN INTERDISCIPLINARY CONTEXTS IN A FACULTY OF SCIENCE

As exemplified by COVID-19, we are living in increasingly uncertain times. What it means to ‘be a scientist’ is dynamic. This presentation describes the innovative design, delivery, and implementation of 32 interdisciplinary capstone units at the University of Sydney Faculty of Science, including the pivot to online delivery in 2020 and initial evaluation. These units were designed in response to University goals to integrate the graduate quality ‘Interdisciplinary Effectiveness’ into undergraduate degrees as well as to develop other complex graduate qualities which are well placed to prepare students to adapt and thrive in situations of uncertainty. These capstones partner science disciplines across majors to facilitate multidisciplinary student teams to work on solving authentic interdisciplinary problems through inquiry-based learning. They share a novel assessment scheme which includes a high proportion of group work, peer evaluation, and reflection on graduate quality development. The units seek to support students to apply their disciplinary knowledge to interdisciplinary problems. We will share the benefits and challenges of this approach to developing and integrating a complex interdisciplinary graduate quality, as well as sharing and reflecting on the process of delivering a suite of new highly hands-on, project- and team-based units online during COVID-19

Toward curriculum convergence for graduate learning outcomes: academic intentions and student experiences

Graduate learning outcomes in undergraduate science degrees increasingly are focussed on the development of transferrable skillsets. Research into, and comparisons of, the perceptions of students and academic staff on such learning outcomes has rarely been explored in science. This study used a quantitative survey to explore the perceptions of 640 undergraduate science students and 70 academics teaching into a Bachelor of Science degree program on the importance, the extent to which outcomes were included and assessed, the improvement and likely future use of science graduate learning outcomes. Analysis of findings shed light on potential pathways toward curriculum convergence by arguing the need for shared perspectives of academics and students on graduate learning outcomes and drawing on the planned-enacted-experienced curriculum model. Moving toward coherent curriculum planning that draws on both student and academic perspectives to achieve graduate learning outcomes is the key contribution of this study. Resulting recommendations include: the need to consider the development of each complex graduate learning outcome as distinct from other outcomes in both curricular and pedagogical approach, and the need for a programmatic framework for assessment practices to facilitate the constructive alignment of assessment with learning outcomes

Co-creating inclusive science curricula with students as partners

Student cohorts are rapidly diversifying with proportional increases in students from underrepresented minority groups including those defined by race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, family composition, age, and economic status (Higher Education Today, 2018). STEM education is evolving more slowly and barriers faced by students are inequitable with underrepresented students facing greater challenges than their ‘traditional’ counterparts in achieving academic success (Kuh, O'Donnell, & Schneider, 2017). One reason cited for these educational inequalities is the normative nature of many curricula in failing to include diverse experiences and ways of knowing (Jester, 2018). Regarding student learning, seeing the omission of their histories from mainstream curricula can lead to feelings of isolation, alienation, & marginalisation, to higher attrition rates, & to increases in inequitable sociodemographic attainment gaps (Magd, 2016; Seidman, 2012; Strayhorn, 2012). This presentation, including student co-presenters, will share a process of science academics and professional staff partnering with science students in a faculty-wide initiative to make STEM curricula more inclusive & representative of diverse identities. Initial experiences, reflections, and findings from early evaluations will be reported with important implications and recommendations relevant to future teaching and learning initiatives in STEM

The ‘Partnership Identity’ in Higher Education: Moving From ‘Us’ and ‘Them’ to ‘We’ in Student-Staff Partnership

Student-staff partnerships in higher education re-frame the ways that students and staff work together as active collaborators in teaching and learning. Such a radical re-visioning of the relationships between students, staff, and the institutions within which they function is both potentially transformational and a significant challenge given the deeply entrenched identities, and attached norms, that form a part of the institutional culture. Explicit examination of the ways in which identity formation and navigation influences, and is influenced by, student-staff partnership is an important but under-explored area in the partnership literature. Drawing on structured reflective narratives focused on our own partnership experiences, we employ collaborative autoethnographic methods to explore this nexus through a social identity lens. Results highlight the need to move away from the labelling of dichotomous student/staff roles and identities in the context of partnership to a more nuanced conception that embraces the multiplicity of identity and diverse dimensions of meaning. We highlight the power of the normative conceptions that we attach to different identities, particularly where dissonance arises should those norms conflict. We discuss how this dissonance was particularly salient for us as we crossed the partnership threshold, only to find that the ethos underlying our new partnership identities contradicted the traditional hierarchical structure of the institutions within which we continued to function. Finally, we highlight the implications of these results for those engaging in student-staff partnerships in higher education and point the way toward potentially fruitful avenues of future research

Integrating communication skills into undergraduate science degrees: A practical and evidence-based approach

The introduction of generic skills, such as communication, into undergraduate science degrees is becoming common in higher education and has met with mixed implementation success. This study designed, piloted, and evaluated a set of adaptable activities that scaffold the explicit teaching and learning of science communication with non-scientific audiences. These activities were implemented in undergraduate science classes from three disciplines at an Australian research-intensive university. A mixed- methods approach was used to evaluate learning gains by collecting data from: student surveys; semi-structured interviews with academic teaching staff; and student performance by marking of assessment tasks. Self-reported learning gains showed 95% of all students perceived improvements in their ability to do all communication skills and 94% perceived improvements in their confidence in communicating science as a result of the activities. Academic teaching staff reported improvements in students’ communication skills and understanding of core science content, and indicated that the tasks were explicit, engaging, and sustainable for use in future years. Students successfully transferred their learning to their assignments, demonstrating on average, a ‘good,’ ‘excellent,’ or ‘outstanding’ standard for each of the science communication criteria. These activities provide a promising starting point for integrating employable communication skills into undergraduate science degrees

Integrating communication skills into undergraduate science degrees: A practical and evidence-based approach

The introduction of generic skills, such as communication, into undergraduate science degrees is becoming common in higher education and has met with mixed implementation success. This study designed, piloted, and evaluated a set of adaptable activities that scaffold the explicit teaching and learning of science communication with non-scientific audiences. These activities were implemented in undergraduate science classes from three disciplines at an Australian research-intensive university. A mixed-methods approach was used to evaluate learning gains by collecting data from: student surveys; semi-structured interviews with academic teaching staff; and student performance by marking of assessment tasks. Self-reported learning gains showed 95% of all students perceived improvements in their ability to do all communication skills and 94% perceived improvements in their confidence in communicating science as a result of the activities. Academic teaching staff reported improvements in students' communication skills and understanding of core science content, and indicated that the tasks were explicit, engaging, and sustainable for use in future years. Students successfully transferred their learning to their assignments, demonstrating on average, a 'good,' 'excellent,' or 'outstanding' standard for each of the science communication criteria. These activities provide a promising starting point for integrating employable communication skills into undergraduate science degrees

Communication in undergraduate science - how can we better engage students?

Communication is a ubiquitous graduate attribute and learning outcome for undergraduate science degrees across the world and an invaluable tool for students to demonstrate their learning. Most undergraduate science students in general science degrees engage poorly with communication tasks and all too often do not see the relevance of communication to their role as scientists. Simultaneously most academic staff teaching into science degrees are familiar with only a narrow set of communication tools and approaches, and often no theory, despite them recognising the value of effective communication. This results in a narrow range of somewhat outdated communication tasks being assessed. This ideas exchange session aims to stimulate detailed discussions and direction for the education of undergraduate science students in communication and discuss how to obtain evidence to inform decisions about what communication students should learn. Participants will be asked what communication practices, models and principles should undergraduate science students learn to better engage them with communication? And how might evidence be obtained/sought to support decisions about what communication to teach and/or development of a framework for educating science students in communication? One option is to document outcomes of such discussions in documented in a framework to help inform best educational practice. We welcome discussion with colleagues interested in furthering these ideas