Scientific writing is an important skill for STEM students to learn as undergraduates but can be time-consuming for instructors to add to their courses and adequately explain to students. Understanding this issue, the Center for Transformative Teaching has developed a Canvas module that contains information, activities, and quizzes on the different aspects of writing a scientific article. This module is designed to be used as a free-standing review module for scientific writing or can be edited to fit the learning objectives and needs of an instructor’s course.
Instructors can import the Scientific Writing Module by going into Canvas and selecting the “Commons” button in the far-left column menu. Once on the Canvas Common’s website, type “Eyde Olson” or “Scientific Writing Module” and then select the module. Alternatively, if logged into Canvas, the module can also be accessed using a direct link. From the module page, select the “Import/Download” button and then select the course(s) to add the module to, and finally select “Import into Course” to add the module to the course(s).
After importing the module, it can be used in several ways depending on the learning objectives and desired outcomes for the course.
- Use the module “as is” and have students complete the activities and quizzes as a review of scientific writing. If used in this manner, instructors will need to edit (1) the point values and method for turning in the assignments; (2) due dates for assignments and quizzes; and (3) make any other changes to the module to align with the course (usually to match discipline specific criteria for different aspects of science writing or make examples or documents used in the module match course topics).
- Use the elements of the module but move them out of the “Scientific Writing Module” and into course modules to align with a long-term project on scientific writing (move each topic to the week/module in your course where students will be learning about it and working on writing their own section for a larger assignment). If using this method, we advise deleting the imported module after moving all the components to the modules in the course.
- Use only the aspects of the module that are relevant to the course by redesigning, editing, or deleting the aspects as necessary. For example, in high enrollment courses, it may be advised to remove the assignments unless a grading assistant is available to grade these assignments. Alternatively, these assignments could be used for in-class activities (with students completing them in small groups and then going over the answers as a class) instead of graded assignments. Conversely, both the quizzes and assignments could be removed if the module is only going to be used as a resource for students.
Sections of the Module
The module contains the following pages, assignments, and quizzes that can be modified or deleted depending on the learning objectives for the course.
- Scientific Writing (Introduction page)
- Peer Review Process in Science (Information Page, Journal Guidelines Assignment, and Peer Review Quiz)
- Overview of the Parts of a Scientific Article (Introduction page and individual information pages, activities, and quick quizzes for each subtopic)
- Part 1: Title and Abstract
- Part 2: Introduction
- Part 3: Methods
- Part 4: Results
- Part 5: Discussion
- Part 6: Acknowledgements and References
- Part 7: Tables and Figures
Disclaimer: Please note that this module was designed by an instructional designer trained as an aquatic ecologist and thus many of the examples and assignments use scientific articles and examples from biological/ecological fields. If you teach outside of biology or want students to read and use scientific articles from your discipline, you will need to update the assignments to reflect the use of the articles you want students to use.
How to find and import the module into a course
This page was authored by Michele Larson and last updated November 30, 2022 by Eyde Olson. Search under Eyde Olson.
Related Links
Topics