1. How to tweak your science assignments to improve communication skills of your students
Dr Louise Kuchel
Rebecca Mills
School of Biological Sciences
The University of Queensland
UQ T&L week 2017
TARGET AUDIENCE FOR THIS WORKSHOP
Authors of assessment items (especially in the Sciences)
People interested in assessment design/communication

2. Workshop Overview In today’s workshop you will:
Learn strategies that help develop and improve your students’ abilities to communicate effectively
Apply those strategies to science assignments (your own or an example)

3. Improving Science Students’ Communication Skills
WHY?
Approximately 30% of assessment tasks in the BSc at UQ are written or spoken assignments yet many of us complain that our students do not communicate to the standard we expect.
[UQ BSc review 2015]
Employers complain too
Recent research shows that many core communication skills are implicit or absent from science assignments
[Mercer-Mapstone & Kuchel 2015]

4. Teaching communication in Undergraduate Science
GOALS
Students develop basic proficiency in communicating science by:
Using disciplinary specific norms
Adapting it to a variety of contexts
So what should our studetns learn/what should we teach?

5. Improving Science Students’ Communication Skills
HOW do we achieve those goals?
Focus on developing and improving students abilities, not just assess them.
Embed high impact activities such as timely and meaningful feedback
Make the process of communication explicit and support students in learning how to improve each stage of that process
Give students a conceptual framework in which to organise their thinking so they can recognise patterns across different contexts and transfer their learning

6. Your Experience THINK (jot notes)
What is the best assignment you have given/seen that develops students’ communication.
What did the students need to do that made it so good?
PAIR - Discuss your answers
SHARE - With the group
Handout handouts for key principles and ideas bank

7. Improving Science Students’ Communication Skills
THE GOOD NEWS Existing assignments can easily be tweaked to enable our graduates to develop and improve their communication, and learn to transfer their learning to different contexts.

8. Improving Science Students’ Communication Skills
In the assignment, be EXPLICIT about:
Genre
Audience
Purpose
Fill in the G.A.P!

9. Improving Science Students’ Communication Skills
Be EXPLICIT about the process of communication:
Implement meaningful lead-in tasks

10. Improving Science Students’ Communication Skills
In the marking criteria, EXPLICITLY assess communication skills:
Genre
Audience
Purpose
Organisation of Ideas
Mechanics of Writing
Match task instructions with marking criteria.
Louise says you need to
GAPOM!
Mention that there are a few different ideas on your handout

11. Tweaking Science Assignments
Modelling the process for an already great assessment piece:
Fill in the G.A.P. in the task instructions
Support the Process with a lead-in task
G.A.P.O.M. in the marking criteria
Handout model example.; This is already a really good assignment. Going to model how you can tweak it. Purposely chosen already good assignments.

12. YOUR TASK – in table groups
Choose one of the provided sample assessments or an assessment brought in by one of the group members.
Edit the example assignment using the using the yellow handouts to:
Fill in the GAP in the task instructions
Identify or design a lead-in task to highlight process
GAPOM in the Criteria
Nominate a speaker to summarise the changes you made to the assessment piece.
Show of hands if anyone has brought their own assignment – work in pairs with someone at their table

14. Summary
To develop and improve communication skills of science graduates, and help them transfer their learning to different contexts, tweak your assignments by…
Filling in the G.A.P.
Implementing lead-in tasks
G.A.P.O.M. in the marking criteria
Contact Louise or Rebecca in the School of Biological Sciences…
Louise Kuchel
Rebecca Mills