This website aims to provide educators with a compilation of resources to assist in teaching STEM and non-STEM undergraduates how to tackle scientific journal articles.
Primary scientific literature is highly specialized yet vital to scientific education and endeavors. However, strategies students typically use for examining higher education readings must be molded to be efficiently applied to such a scientific context. You may find that the strategies suggested by current academic literature may draw upon skills you or your non-STEM colleagues have already taught your students. That doesn’t mean these skills do not have to be honed, adapted, and framed in a scientific context to help students apply them.
To assist in this process, this site includes the following resources:
- Example learning objectives for teaching science literature (Goals).
- Guidance for selecting the best first article to help your students succeed (Choosing an Article).
- An overview of the legendary CREATE method, which revolutionized teaching science literature by using papers to teach the scientific process.
- Smaller, more modular techniques that can be incorporated into a single class session before being provided as take-home guides (Augmented Learning).
- Ideas for how to set up an undergraduate-focused Journal Club either as a within-class activity or extracurricular engagement.
- Student Resources in a variety of formats which don’t necessarily have to be scaffolded into the lesson plan, but instead can simply be provided to students as auxiliary material.
The strategies evident on this site are by no means an exhaustive list. They are intended to be adaptable and provide guidance when thinking about incorporating scientific literature into courses of any level — from introductory survey lectures to specialized capstone seminars. I hope the resources you find on this repository help you (and your students) on your journey through teaching scientific journal articles at the undergraduate level.
Teaching Science Literature 