Using an Innovative Approach to Teach Students How to Communicate About Scientific Topics to Non‐Scientists

Abstract

Regardless what career path biochemistry and molecular biology students take, they will all be required to communicate to non‐scientists. Thus, we are excited to share an innovative approach we used in our upper division cancer biology course to teach this skill. For this key aspect of the course, we used a multi‐faceted approach to teach the students how to communicate with non‐scientists both orally and in written form. To begin, we had three cancer survivors come to the class tell their stories of diagnosis and surviving pancreatic cancer. We then required the students to read three primary journal articles about pancreatic cancer research co‐authored by a pancreatic cancer surgeon/researcher who they would meet after reading these articles. Next, the students volunteered at a pancreatic cancer walk/run event so they could meet additional pancreatic cancer survivors and caregivers. After volunteering at this event on a large university campus, the students met with the author to discuss the details of the three assigned papers. Following this very informative discussion, the students each chose one of the three papers and rewrote it in layman's term meant to inform non‐scientists. Each of the students also gave a short oral presentation about the content of their paper to a panel of five pancreatic cancer survivors. These survivors reviewed each of the presentations using a simple rubric we created. We report that all students learned important skills about how to communicate to non‐scientists. Quantitative assessment of these assignments indicated that the combination of community outreach as well as the involvement of cancer survivors and professional caregivers lead to an elevated sense of importance of ‐ and engagement in ‐ the subject matter. We hypothesize that such inclusive and comprehensive pedagogical approaches are helpful for the students when deciding on and developing their future careers. We also emphasize the merits of implementing our approach in other biochemistry and molecular biology courses in order to deepen the appreciation of the subject matter, foster critical and strategic thinking, and develop enhanced science communication skills. All of these ultimately lead to a better and higher quality learning experience for the students.This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2018 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal.