Science Writing in Higher Education: Effects of Teaching Self-Assessment of Scientific Poster Construction on Writing Quality and Academic Achievement

Abstract

Science writing is a complex rhetorical activity that enhances disciplinary participation in university education and requires learner-centered, inquiry-based explicit instruction. This study aimed to determine the effects of teaching writing self-assessment of scientific posters on writing quality and academic achievement in a higher education science class. An interdisciplinary team of science and writing scholars designed an action-research intervention based on two 90-min workshops focused on students' self-assessment of writing scientific posters for a first-semester Cell Biology course for prospective teachers of biology and chemistry in secondary schools. Students co-created and applied a checklist to assess writing traits central to scientific communication (e.g. use of reliable references and original figures, inclusion of limitations and projections) in their posters. Promoted writing traits were qualitatively coded in double-blind fashion in posters from 19 teams with similar intakes: 9 teams (45 students, 100% population) in the treatment group and 10 teams (50 randomly selected students, 50% population) from two previous years. Principal component analysis (PCA) and permutation ANOVA were used to quantitatively determine divergence between groups. Results indicated that posters constructed by intervention-treated teams were significantly better in terms of the reliability and retrievability of sources; they also showed a higher number of student-made figures, projections and conclusions. In addition, evaluators' scores for posters increased in the treatment groups, although this did not have a significant impact on overall grades. These results offer empirical support of self-assessment for learning and the use of poster construction as effective pedagogical strategies in science teacher education.