Journal Club 3.0: An Effective Method of Training High School Students to Understand and Present Relevant Academic Research Papers

Abstract

People are asked to make decisions influencing the world we live in based on peer‐reviewed academic research, a fundamental component of scientific research and development. However, high schoolers are provided with little scaffolding to read and understand relevant scientific papers, limiting their ability to engage with the field on this level. Here, we compare two self‐propagating student‐driven systems, in which experienced students help inexperienced peers learn to read and present on recent academic research papers. In the first system, student presenters undergo a series of meetings, each led by a different team consisting of two students. The teams each specialize in one of four areas: the broad scope of the paper, its novelty, numerical data, and presentational skills. In the second system, every presenter attends meetings led by a consistent team of 3‐5 students who are each trained in one of the following areas: the personal story and hook, the main question and supporting data, and presentational skills. Our data suggests that working with a consistent group of reviewers led to more continuity between the review meetings, eliminating redundancies and increasing preparedness for weekly meetings. This continuity also enabled review teams to tailor the preparation process to fit the presenter’s needs. The improved process increased efficiency, enhanced the presenter experience, and led to a higher quality of presentations. This research contributes to our goal of implementing a peer‐to‐peer training system that effectively heightens students’ scientific literacy skills and allows them to develop a deeper understanding of current issues in different fields that are being solved through a variety of research paradigms and data analyses.