Poronnik Philip, Moni Roger W
Educational Research Unit, School of Biomedical Sciences, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.
Adv Physiol Educ. 2006 Jun;30(2):73-82. doi: 10.1152/advan.00075.2005.
Improving the public understanding of science is an important challenge for the future professional scientists who are our current undergraduates. In this paper, we present a conceptual model that explores the role of mass media as community gatekeepers of new scientific findings. This model frames the benefits for undergraduate science students to learn about media genres so that they can learn to communicate science more effectively to nonprofessional audiences. Informed by this Media Role model, we then detail a novel writing task for undergraduate physiology students, the Opinion Editorial (Op-Ed), and an accompanying Peer Review. The Op-Ed genre was directly taught to the students by a professional journalist. As an assessment task, students presented a recent, highly technical paper as an Op-Ed. This was assessed by both faculty members and peers using a detailed assessment rubric. Most students were able to replicate the features of Op-Eds and attained high grades on their writing tasks. Survey data from final-year physiology students (n = 230) were collected before and after the implementation of the Op-Ed/Peer Review. These indicated that most students were aware of the importance of scientists to effectively communicate their knowledge to nonprofessional audiences, that the Op-Ed writing task was challenging, and that they believed that their ability to write to nonprofessional audiences was improved after explicit teaching and feedback.
提高公众对科学的理解，对我们当前的本科生——未来的专业科学家来说，是一项重大挑战。在本文中，我们提出了一个概念模型，探讨大众媒体作为新科学发现的社区守门人的作用。该模型阐述了本科理科学生了解媒体类型的益处，以便他们学会更有效地向非专业受众传播科学知识。基于这个媒体角色模型，我们详细介绍了一项针对本科生理学学生的新颖写作任务——评论专栏文章（Op-Ed）以及一项配套的同行评审。评论专栏文章的体裁由一位专业记者直接教授给学生。作为一项评估任务，学生们将一篇近期的、专业性很强的论文写成评论专栏文章。这由教师和同行使用详细的评估标准进行评估。大多数学生能够复制评论专栏文章的特点，并在写作任务中取得高分。在实施评论专栏文章/同行评审之前和之后，收集了最后一年生理学学生（n = 230）的调查数据。这些数据表明，大多数学生意识到科学家向非专业受众有效传播知识的重要性，评论专栏文章写作任务具有挑战性，并且他们相信经过明确的教学和反馈后，自己向非专业受众写作的能力有所提高。
