Lesson Plan: Writing skills for scientists by Tania R.

Iqbal

(A) Objectives 1. Students will be able to: a. Take notes to prepare for properly cited and organized writing assignments b. Synthesize multiple sources to support their own words and ideas c. Fix common writing problems

(B) Summary To properly write papers in the sciences, one needs to be able to portray their ideas in a clear and concise way, while properly citing sources. To be able to do this, students first need to learn what the proper sources are for them to reference in papers for this class. Then they need to have a reliable note-taking method that allows them to reference information that they want to use in their paper, and immediately know what source it came from. Then they need to be able to organize all these bits of information into a paper that flows logically. Students should then use the information they gathered to support the thesis of their paper. In order to communicate this as clearly as possible, students should avoid using jargon, that is, words that are particular to a field that are not otherwise widely understood. Next, they should keep their readers attention by not interrupting important ideas with extraneous details. Backward-linking will help readers through a long paragraph. These are the basics. When students master these techniques, then they can feel comfortable and add their own style into their papers.

(C) Lecture Outline

Slide 1

Writing skills and course expectations

Tania Iqbal

Slide 2

Todays Objectives
Students will be able to:
Identify common writing problems Identify key information from readings Synthesize information from readings to communicate their knowledge to various audiences Practice writing techniques to improve communication skills

Slide 3
Science Blogs

Other writing activities

Editorials Applications /Letters of intent Outreach Protocols

Abstracts News briefs Web content Grants Book Chapters Posters/ Presentations

Public Policy

Technical Writers @ pharma

Book Reviews

Contacts for collaboration /mentoring

ACTIVITY: This class is small, and there is enough room for everyone to get up and write at the white board. Here, students are asked to make a list of all the ideas they have for circumstances in which it is important for a scientist to be a good writer. Each student describes their list (or what they have that hasnt been said), and we look at what I came up with and discuss. This way we realize that writing isnt just all about publications and grants. You may want to have a science blog to make your research more popular and attract students and post docs, for example. Nevertheless, the ability to develop well-written manuscripts is particularly important. This is discussed here.

Slide 4

Importance of Publications
Critical to promotion
Final product of the research project Help colleagues learn about your work AND you Measurement of productivity Quality vs quantity

Critical to funding
Grant applications Grant progress reports Grant renewal applications

Slide 5
I am not looking for a book report!

This is a comical look at what sciencewriting should not be (but often is).

And Im not looking for fancy science-talk, either (Calvin).

Slide 6

What is science writing?

Defend an idea
Hypothesize present and analyze data make conclusions synthesize ideas advocate one idea over another interpret findings

These things must be done to make sure your audience receives your message
David Porush, A Short Guide to Writing About Science. New York: HarperCollins College Publishers, 1995.

If Calvin represents all that sciencewriting should not be, then what is good science writing? I emphasize that at this stage in their education, they are not writing book reports- simply summarizing what others have written. Instead, instructors are looking for your own interpretations.

Slide 7

Writing assignment goals

Clear and concise

Show me that you actually understand the science

Everything in your own words

Slide 8

http://grandstreetlibraryela.wikispaces.com/Plagiarism

Slide 9

Plagiarism
Plagiarism is . . . the appropriation of another persons ideas, processes, results or words without giving appropriate credit. Plagiarism may be accidental or blatant and there is even self-plagiarism. However, students are held to the same standards whether or not they knew they were plagiarizing or whether or not they were plagiarizing themselves or someone else.
https://www.msu.edu/unit/ombud/academic-integrity/plagiarism-policy.html

Defining plagiarism. https://www.msu.edu/unit/ombud/acade mic-integrity/plagiarism-policy.html

Slide 10
Blatant Purposefully using someone else's ideas or work without proper acknowledgment is plagiarism. This includes turning in borrowed or bought research papers as one's own. Self Turning in the same term paper (or substantially the same paper) for two courses without getting permission from one's instructor is plagiarism. In science, copying portions of text from one of my own papers into another. Jurys out on the methods section. Accidental or Unintentional One may not even know that they are plagiarizing. It is the student's responsibility to make certain that they understand the difference between quoting and paraphrasing, as well as the proper way to cite material.

Slide 11

An excerpt from a research article is placed in a students paper, and a citation is placed after and in the references list:

(Cowley et al., 2008)

Okay- whats the problem?

ASSESSMENT: Here I want students to recognize a form of plagiarism that has cropped up in earlier classes I have taught. The work has been attributed to the source, but the student has not put the work in their own words. I simply ask them if there is a problem here, yes or no. I can call on someone to explain yes, someone to explain no.

Slide 12

Accidental or Unintentional Plagiarism

So can I just place quotation marks around it, and everything is okay now?
Your job is to put everything in your own words There will be very few instances in which you will need to use direct quotes in science writing. Yes, exceptions will occur.

A discussion of the use of direct quotations in this field. It should be used sparingly. http://www.usca.edu/biogeo/researchgu ide/writing.html#Quotations

Slide 13
How am I supposed to put this in my own words when it has already been written perfectly? Putting information in your own words is the bare minimum. A major goal in science writing is the synthesis of ideas to support arguments and interpretations

Here it is emphasized again, that at this level, we as instructors are not interested in assigning students factfinding missions. Instead, they need to be demonstrating their understanding and interpretations. Thus, they need to learn to synthesize information.

Slide 14
Scholarly paper Pamphlet News article Scholarly paper

Your turn
Short writing assignments

When might it be necessary to be concise?

Grant proposals have restraining page limits
NRSA can be only 6 pages long including figures

Some top journals have page limit restraints Short attention spans of reviewers and audience!

Term paper

Slide 15

Turnitin
Consistent with MSUs efforts to enhance student learning, foster honesty, and maintain integrity in our academic processes, instructors may use a tool called Turnitin to compare a students work with multiple sources. The tool compares each students work with an extensive database of prior publications and papers, providing links to possible matches and a similarity score. The tool does not determine whether plagiarism has occurred or not. Instead, the instructor must make a complete assessment and judge the originality of the students work. All submissions to this course may be checked using this tool. Students should submit papers to Turnitin Dropboxes without identifying information included in the paper (e.g. name or student number), the system will automatically show this info to faculty in your course when viewing the submission, but the information will not be retained by Turnitin.

Turnitin is used in this course. I discuss that it is not to get anyone in trouble, but to teach them to cite and write properly. As such, we allow them to upload their assignment and see their similarity score. As long as it is before the deadline, if their similarity score is not acceptable, they can work on their wording and resubmit.

Slide 16
most people learn to write scientific papers by reading a whole mess of scientific papers and trying to imitate their style. Unfortunately, this process seems to entrench a lot of bad habits. David Porush, A Short Guide to Writing About Science

EFFECTIVE WRITING TECHNIQUES

Slide 17

Goals of synthesizing technique

Synthesize ideas
Keep sources straight Write a well-organized paper

Slide 18
Idea 4 Idea 1 Idea 3

You are given a broad topic for your paper. You start to formulate some ideas about what you think youll write about in this paper.

Botox

Idea 5 Idea 2

Slide 19

Where do you start?

Wikipedia
Fine as a starting point. What does the wiki article reference?

Credible/acceptable sources

Google scholar Pubmed Web of Science Association websites

Find a good review article

Slide 20

Notetaking

This is to illustrate the information gathering aspect.

Modified from http://www.west.asu.edu/johnso/synthesis/synthesis.html#examples

Slide 21

What note-taking may look like:

The Slug note-taking technique. Each notecard contains one bit of information that you would like to include in your paper, paraphrased. The notecard also includes the citation and the slug. The slug is what the card is about, a category/concept.

http://shsbanghart.pbworks.com/w/file/fetch/61633656/notetaking.pdf

Slide 22

What note-taking may look like:

http://www.dartmouth.edu/~acskills/success/notes.html

Students probably arent reading from books and writing on notecards that much anymore. Instead, they are reading pdfs and using Microsoft word. The Cornell system can be used like the slug system, but adapted. In the main column you summarize the information. In the smaller column you have your slug. Make sure to keep the citation here as well.

Slide 23

Start categorizing

With all your information in one place, you start to notice that you have slugs that go together with the ideas you had for your paper, while other ideas are not well supported. Get rid of the unsupported ideas.

Slide 24

Now you can put slugs together and see where you can put your ideas in. The green boxes represent ways you can synthesize the information you have gathered and use the information to support your ideas.
Dont tell me everything about Botox. You wont be able to do that well in a short paper. Instead, focus your paper!

Slide 25

Organize your paper

The information within your paragraphs will now be nicely organized. But the flow of the paper is important too, so take a look at your categories and put them in an order that makes sense. You already have all your information under these categories, so youre almost there!

Slide 26
Add meat to the bones!
Now you have all your notes organized into your outline All you have to do now is put everything in your own words!
Interpret Advocate

Slide 27

Citations
Keep track of your references and citations as you work EndNote RefMan Zotero Mendeley

Students may not be aware of citation management software. There are great free ones, Zotero, Mendeley.

Slide 28

Major problems in science writing

Jargon, abbreviations, complex word choices
Use the appropriate word, but dont try to make it sound sciency! (Calvin cartoon) Does the abbreviation actually help or hurt? Could you replace a long name with a couple words?

http://scienceblogs.com/ethicsandscien ce/2007/07/11/porush/

It is known that, Scientist X has shown that Get to the point! Passive over active tenses
This and that were done by X. Lack of pronouns- When is I did this appropriate?

Complex sentence structures to cram in every last detail.

Break it up! Dont interrupt the important information

Slide 29

What is jargon?
Do you know the meaning? Dont use it because you assume the instructor understands- explain it to demonstrate that you understand Making terms and procedure into slang
The samples were
western blotted centrifuged

Slide 30

Active rather than passive

Cats are hated by dogs No change in activity was observed Their suggestion for us was a different analysis of the data An increase in transplant rejection occurred

ASSESSMENT. Here I have the students call out their corrections (or I call on them if they are being shy): Dogs hate cats We observed no change in activity Reviewers suggested we use a different analysis Transplant rejection increased

Examples from Hofmann, 2010, Scientific Writing and Communication

Slide 31

Start with the old, end with the new

Plagiarism is . . . the appropriation of another persons ideas, processes, results or words without giving appropriate credit. Listing the author and the publication after their idea or in a reference list is how you give proper credit. Plagiarism is . . . the appropriation of another persons ideas, processes, results or words without giving appropriate credit. Proper credit is given by listing the author and publication after their idea and/or in a list of references.
Example from Hofmann, 2010, Scientific Writing and Communication

Sometimes readers can get lost. One way to keep them on track is to end a sentence with what they next sentence will be about. Then in the second sentence, the new information is added at the end. http://cgi.stanford.edu/~deptctl/tomprof/posting.php?ID=997

Slide 32

Practice backward linking

Practice backward-linking: Macular degeneration is affected by diet. One of the diet components that influences the progression of macular degeneration is vitamin B6. Although vitamin B6 seems to reduce the risk of macular degeneration, it may have some side effects.
What would the next sentence be about?

Examples from Hofmann, 2010, Scientific Writing and Communication

ASSESSMENT. Here I read the passage with the linking words highlighted. I ask the students what they expect the next sentence to be about. Backward linking makes them expect that the next sentence is about side effects (so if it isnt, youve messed with the audiences expectations, and therefore you may have lost your reader!)

Slide 33

Complex sentence
Plagiarism, from the Latin plagiarius, an abductor, and plagiare, to steal, is defined by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy on Misconduct in Research as . . . the appropriation of another persons ideas, processes, results or words without giving appropriate credit. Grammatical subjects should be followed by their verbs as soon as possible. (No subject-verb separation) Readers expect information that is emphasized to occur at the end of a clause or sentence.
Syntactic closure comes HERE, but it can also come HERE.

This passage is actually from the MSU website about plagiarism. I use it to show that they have interjected the important information with some superfluous details. Take out the red, use the blue as a citation, and you have a sentence that is easy to read.

Slide 34

Complex sentence fixes

The heavily disordered patterns characteristic of interference arising from multiple regions with different phase drops across the junction were eliminated by X.

ASSESSMENT. I have the students write their correction to this difficult passage and share it with their neighbor, and then volunteer to share with their class when they are comfortable. At least, thats what I would like to happen. Students had such a hard time with this example that they couldnt even decipher what the subject was. X eliminated the heavily disordered patterns. These patterns are characteristic....

Slide 35

Writing Resources
Go to MSU library website, then catalog. Search keyword scientific writing. G. D. Gopen, J. A. Swan, "The Science of Scientific Writing," American Scientist , 78: 550-58, 1990 The Writing Center at MSU |writing.msu.edu/

Slide 36

Writing rules
Synthesize information to support your own ideas Keep track of citations at all times KISS- word choices. Keep the sentence short.
Start sentence with subject, immediately followed by verb.

A summary of the rules. Will keep this up on the projector as they work on their group exercise:

Following sentence should start with an old idea before introducing a new idea
Keep making links for your reader

Active words over passive

Slide 37

ACTIVITY and ASSESSMENT

Group Activity Synthesizing Writing Exercise

Slide 38

Instructions
Work in groups of 3 students Each Group: 3 short paragraphs from different sources. - Individual Work
Read and summarize ONE of the paragraphs

- Group Work
Compile all 3 summaries to make one concise summary

Topic: Main Components of the Nervous System

Hint: When summarizing your paragraph keep in mind the topic in order to focus on the relevant information.

We end with the activity, for which I allow 12 minutes. We look at all the examples they came up with. This can help identify what you like about your writing and what you liked that someone else did that perhaps was better. (Activity handout is on the next page)

Synthesizing Writing Exercise (This handout was put together by Eileen) Task Instructions Work in groups of 3 students Each group will have 3 short paragraphs from different sources. The information provided is about the main structure of the nervous system. The task will be to read and synthesize the information provided from the 3 sources to write a short informative paragraph about: Main Components of the Nervous System. Each student will read and summarize ONE of the paragraphs. While doing this keep in mind the main topic so that you can focus on the relevant information. As a group you will compiled all of the 3 summaries to make a single concise summary about the topic.

Topic: Main Components of the Nervous System

Source 1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nervous_system The nervous system is the part of an animal's body that coordinates the voluntary and involuntary actions of the animal and transmits signals between different parts of its body. In most types of animals it consists of two main parts, the central nervous system (CNS) and the peripheral nervous system (PNS). The CNS contains the brain and spinal cord. The PNS consists mainly of nerves, which are long fibers that connect the CNS to every other part of the body. The PNS includes motor neurons, mediating voluntary movement, the autonomic nervous system, comprising the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system and regulating involuntary functions, and the enteric nervous system, a semi-independent part of the nervous system whose function is to control the gastrointestinal system. At the cellular level, the nervous system is defined by the presence of a special type of cell, called the neuron, also known as a "nerve cell". Neurons have special structures that allow them to send signals rapidly and precisely to other cells. They send these signals in the form of electrochemical waves traveling along thin fibers called axons, which cause chemicals called neurotransmitters to be released at junctions called synapses. A cell that receives a synaptic signal from a neuron may be excited, inhibited, or otherwise modulated. The connections between neurons form neural circuits that generate an organism's perception of the world and determine its behavior. Along with neurons, the nervous system contains other specialized cells called glial cells (or simply glia), which provide structural and metabolic support. Source 2: http://web.mst.edu/~rhall/neuroscience/02_structure_and_pharmacology/structure.pdf The two principle divisions of the nervous system are the central and peripheral. The former consists of the brain and spinal cord, while the latter is the rest of the nervous system. The brain and spinal cord carry out the bulk of the complex processing, while the peripheral acts as a sort of buffer between the central nervous system and the outside world. The peripheral system can be further subdivided into the somatic and automatic, the former responsible for somatosensation and conscious/purposeful action, while the latter is responsible for "vegetative" processes. The autonomic division can also be divided into two systems, the sympathetic and parasympathetic, which carry out the opposing processes of arousal and relaxation

Source 3: http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/nsdivide.html
The nervous system is divided into the central nervous system and peripheral nervous system. The central nervous system is divided into two parts: the brain and the spinal cord. The average adult human brain weighs 1.3 to 1.4 kg (approximately 3 pounds). The brain contains about 100 billion nerve cells (neurons) and trillions of "support cells" called glia. The spinal cord is about 43 cm long in adult women and 45 cm long in adult men and weighs about 35-40 grams. The peripheral nervous system is divided into two major parts: the somatic nervous system and the autonomic

nervous system. The somatic nervous system consists of peripheral nerve fibers that send sensory information to the central nervous system AND motor nerve fibers that project to skeletal muscle. The autonomic nervous system is divided into three parts: the sympathetic nervous system, the parasympathetic nervous system and the enteric nervous system. The autonomic nervous system controls smooth muscle of the viscera (internal organs) and glands. The enteric nervous system is a third division of the autonomic nervous system that you do not hear much about. The enteric nervous system is a meshwork of nerve fibers that innervate the viscera (gastrointestinal tract, pancreas, gall bladder).

Write your individual summary here:

Group synthesis paragraph: