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Science Writing Curriculum

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Getting Started

Summary of Curriculum Materials

These curriculum materials are designed to guide students in the rhetorical moves and conventions of effective science journal articles. These modular materials can be used individually to teach the components of a journal article (Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, and Discussion, or IMRAD). Or, if following the entire sequence, they can help students develop a full article.

The curriculum sequence assumes that students begin by brainstorming an experimental design and finish by publishing their results. After the invention stage, students practice writing and reviewing the modular components of an article. After the components have been developed, students assemble working drafts which are reviewed for coherence, style, and citation.

  • Audience: undergraduates, graduates
  • Focus: genre conventions
  • Length: a full term (16 weeks)

These materials were designed by:

  • Melissa Graham Meeks, PhD (Rhetoric and Composition, Media Editor)
  • Ingrid Lofgren, PhD, MPH, RD (Nutrition and Food Sciences, University of Rhode Island)

Full Details: see the Curriculum Overview for background and documentation.

What's Included

This curriculum helps students recognize and meet the expectations of science writing through direct instructions and extensive practice. The activities are appropriate for a thesis writing course or similar writing-intensive course in which students are expected to design, execute, and publish a study.

Included here are 14 write-review-revise sequences that can be used as-is or modified to meet your needs:

  • A 3-sequence Invention Phase to help writers learn the basic conventions, develop compelling titles, and assemble an outline.
  • An 8-sequence Article Components Phase focused on each major section of an article (materials and methods, introduction, results, discussion).
  • A final 3-sequences focused on the Full Article Assembly Phase that help make sure the components have been assembled effectively.

The writing and review activities here can be repurposed for offline use or imported into Eli Review and modified as needed. For more details on working with the content, see the How to Use These Materials section.

How to Use These Materials

This set of buttons with each activity makes it easy to work that material:

  1. Use This Task in Eli: Each task can be loaded from this website into your Eli Review course. Clicking any big blue button will launch Eli. Once launched, choose the class into which you want to load the task. You'll be able to modify it as needed (including setting due dates and review groups) and then assign to students.
  2. Print Task: These buttons will allow you to print any individual task. You can also find buttons that will print a whole page or the Print All link up top will print the entire curriculum.
  3. Hash Tags: Each task is already available to use in Eli Review. You can find them by searching your Task Repository for the hash of a specific task, or the general hash #SJ will show you all tasks from this curriculum.

To learn more about Eli Review, see the product website.

For more details about using these materials, see the curriculum video demo or the Curriculum Help section.

Copyright

The copyright to these instructional materials belongs to their authors, Melissa Graham Meeks and Ingrid Lofgren. However, they are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. This means you are free to copy and redistribute them in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material, as long as you provide proper attribution to the author. Commercial use of this content is prohibited.

Teaching Resources

This practice curriculum was created based on a number of theories about how people learn and specifically how people learn how to write. Some of those theories, and resources to learn more about them, include:

For resources specific to teaching the science writing, see the Science Writing Resources section in Project Overview.