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You’re Reading What?!?  Using Journal Articles As Teaching Tools to Enhance Student Learning

A major goal of biology education is that students learn the tools and skill of the profession – in other words, they learn how to think like and be a scientist.  Arguably, one of the most important skills in becoming a scientist is the ability to comprehend, analyze and evaluate primary literature. However, research has shown that even upper-division students find this challenging. Integrating primary literature into a science course can be time-intensive for both the faculty and students, but it is an essential opportunity to prepare students to function as scientists. There are a variety of ways to use the primary literature beyond just having students read articles and discuss the results, and some of these methods are especially relevant for lower level students. The goal of this workshop is for participants to explore a variety of techniques to incorporate journal articles into all levels of undergraduate education, including non-majors courses, to improve student understanding of scientific writing and critical thinking skills, such as interpreting data, generating hypotheses, and evaluating the validity of scientific arguments.

Through this workshop, participants will work collaboratively to 1) examine the breadth of learning objectives that can be met using primary literature in the classroom, 2) discover the numerous ways in which journal articles can be used to meet these objectives, 3) develop methods to assess learning in this context, and 4) explore good sources of articles appropriate for different class levels.

We invite faculty, postdocs and graduate students to join us as we explore using the primary literature to inform and transform undergraduate biology education.