Sarah here –
If you’ve been following Time Scavengers, you may have seen the paleo news posts that my students have written, which have been great! This post is a summary post about what I learned and what my students learned throughout the course of this project. I teach an upper- level class for geoscience majors at The University of South Florida called paleontology and stratigraphy. When I was designing what the course would look like, I tried to think about the skills I most wanted my students to have upon leaving. As most of my students in my classes won’t become paleontologists— they’ll go into a wide variety of science jobs— I wanted to find skills that will help them, no matter where they go. A lot of the things I want them to learn are already skills emphasized in a lot of college classes, including the ones I teach— critical thinking, evidence- based arguments, hypothesis testing, and other things. But one thing that I value a lot in science is the ability to communicate clearly with anyone, not just scientists.
The talks, seminars, and papers that I see and read and resonate with most are those that are easily accessible. It’s hard to get engaged and get excited about a topic (even something in my field!) if I have to continuously stop and think about what the person might be trying to say— I think most people would probably feel the same. I wanted my students to practice explaining scientific concepts in a way that anyone who wanted to read it would understand, so that when they wrote papers, presented research talks, talked to future clients, or even chatted with people about their science in cabs or at family gatherings, they could remember how to break down complicated concepts in an effective way without removing the main points of the science.
Students chose a recently published paper of their own interest and wrote a draft of their summary. Then, they had a chance to learn a bit more about the peer review process scientists go through (check out more on how peer review and publishing works here) by trading drafts with a partner and reviewing their work for clarity, accuracy, and grammar. I made final suggestions as the editor. Finally, the posts were published on this site! You can read all of my excellent students’ work here: USF Paleo/Strat
Students really seemed to enjoy this project, so much so that I had an idea for this spring and summer: to get students involved in a long term project to develop their scientific communication skills. Over the next few months, you’ll start seeing posts from my students who are writing a series of blogs and paper summaries as they work to develop their scientific communication skills. If you haven’t yet had a chance to meet Kailey, Lisette, Baron, or Mckenna, check out their bios now!