Practitioners of course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) often evaluate student learning through journal article style lab reports. In our biology department, CUREs are used in multiple required and elective course labs to teach biology students how real scientific experimentation is conducted. We utilize journal article style lab reports to assess student learning since scientific writing is an important currency for scientists. Faculty have found that student writing does not always improve as students’ progress toward graduation and that we find ourselves teaching fundamentals of scientific writing to advanced students that should have been mastered earlier in their academic careers. Furthermore, biology students fail to grasp that even though the biological sub-discipline is different, the skills and content associated with the writing are similar. To address these concerns, we have developed a Research Across the Curriculum Rubric (RAC-R) for assessing student scientific writing. Herein, we present our rubric as well as the process and timeline we used for its development, the intra-departmental communication required to ensure that the rubric would meet the needs of multiple instructors across several biology disciplines, and examples of how we have adapted the rubric for use in both upper and lower-level courses.

Alternative title

• Trends in Teaching Experimentation in the Life Sciences : Putting Research into Practice to Drive Institutional Change

Creator

• Wilson, Kristy J.

• Kinkade, Karla B.

Publisher

• Springer Nature

Language

• English

Identifier

• ISBN: 978-3-030-98591-2

• ISBN: 978-3-030-98592-9

关键词

• Rubric

• Assessment

• Scientific writing

• Information literacy

• Course mapping

• Lab reports

• Course-based undergraduate research experience (CURE)

Date created

• 2022

Related URL

• Available from the library catalog at:  https://marianunivindianapolis.on.worldcat.org/oclc/1320814472

• Available from the publisher at:  https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-98592-9_15#citeas

Resource type

• Part of Book

Rights statement

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/