Learning Focus: Scaffolded Primary Literature Curriculum for Improved Student Skills

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Essential student skills in the molecular life sciences include the ability to locate relevant chemical literature, to critically analyze and evaluate primary literature, and to communicate scientific understanding in written and oral forms. Often, students have difficulty using primary literature and there is a lack of resources for purposeful development of these skills. To improve undergraduate skills for reading, writing, and critiquing primary literature, a curriculum was developed for an introductory biochemistry lecture to allow students to engage with primary literature in a controlled environment and gradually increase their usage. The curriculum consisted of case studies relating to lecture topics and figure summaries, where students would locate a primary, peer‐reviewed research article and summarize one of the figures from the article. After gaining experience with primary literature in these assignments, students wrote a literature review on a protein’s structure‐function relationship. This scaffolded primary literature curriculum was intended to shift student learning from passive to active engagement by applying their knowledge to reading and critiquing science to improve their confidence. From 2016–2019, the curriculum was assessed using student evaluations, pre‐ and post‐surveys, and student writing samples. Students reported that they felt more comfortable understanding the background necessary to use and critique primary literature, and communicate about that literature in written form. Student performance on these assignments showed that statistical improvement in assignment scores was not achieved until the third case study or figure summary.