Abstract: Faculty and professionals in science, including ecology, commonly complain that students are poor communicators. Because of large classes, biology faculty struggle to give adequate feedback on writing assignments with enough iterations for students to improve their writing skills. By providing conceptual tools to unpack scientific text, a technical writing course can help students with their communication, science literacy, and critical thinking skills. The goal of the project was to determine if such course, coordinated with a biology lab, and the presence of a dedicated writing teaching assistant (WTA) for feedback could improve student achievement and perception in writing, critical thinking, and critical reading of the scientific literature.
We paired an optional writing course with Biology of the Cell Lab, a lower-level course required in all biology programs (including wildlife ecology and zoology). We created a graduate-level science writing and pedagogy course from which we recruited WTAs, one from Biology and another from English. We predicted that student achievement would be higher in a lab with a WTA than without, and that the pairing of WTAs from Biology and English would further improve student achievement. We administered a critical thinking test (CAT) and a survey of student perceived skills and confidence in reading, writing, and critical thinking at the beginning (pre) and end (post) of each semester between fall 2020 and spring 2022. We performed ANOVA with repeated measures to compare pre- and post-scores from the CAT and survey. We also coded three writing assignments in the lab to identify an improvement in student writing and to assess the effectiveness of the writing course and WTA pairing.
Critical thinking and scientific writing improved over the course of a semester. However, results were not consistent for us to attribute these improvements to the writing course or the presence of one or both WTA. Having a WTA helped students understand scientific literature and increase their confidence and skills in writing. Furthermore, students who had both WTAs did better on the CAT than those who had only one WTA. Yet, the group graded by both WTAs only marginally outperformed the other two groups in writing skills. Although students who attended the writing course did not believe their writing skills improve, coding data suggest that they did. Overall, regardless of the method, repeated exposure to writing seems to help students improve their skills and boost their confidence and comfort in writing, reading, and critical thinking.
