Proposal Title
Critical analysis of figures is as helpful as reading the whole paper: The data-centric ‘Figure Facts’ activity leads students to practice graph interpretation and helps them understand research papers better
Session Type
Digital Poster
Room
University College, 1110
Start Date
4-7-2019 3:00 PM
Keywords
scientific literacy, primary scientific literature reading, reading, reading skills, transferable skill, data interpretation, visual literacy, Figure Facts
Primary Threads
Teaching and Learning Science
Abstract
Learning to interpret scholarly literature is critical training for evidence-based decision makers, including scientists. In a second-year organismal biology class, we compared the efficacy of two different activities, a ‘Summary Activity’ and ‘Figure Facts’, in directing students to practice graph interpretation and in promoting their comprehension of selected research papers. For the Summary Activity, students briefly summarized a research paper, presumably reading as they normally would. In contrast, the data-centric Figure Facts activity prompted students to interpret the article’s figures and link methods to results, and was previously shown to improve students’ data interpretation ability in an advanced neurobiology course (Round and Campbell 2013).
In this study, after each activity, students self-reported reading behaviours via surveys and answered multiple choice questions measuring their understanding of the articles. Significantly more students engaged in figure interpretation when completing Figure Facts. Students also spent more time on the Results section and less time on the Abstract when doing Figure Facts compared to the Summary Activity. On multiple choice questions, students who prepared with Figure Facts outperformed peers who did summaries. Most students reported highly desirable learning gains from Figure Facts. However, when choosing to complete either activity, most students chose whichever they tried first. We conclude that a simple data-centred reading tool can compel students to practice data interpretation and enhance their grasp of scientific literature.
Round, J. E., & Campbell, A. M. (2013). Figure Facts: encouraging undergraduates to take a data-centered approach to reading primary literature. CBE—Life Sciences Education, 12(1), 39-46.
Elements of Engagement
I will start with introductions, and then ask people to share how they learned to read papers in their respective fields at the beginning of my presentation. In the later part of the presentation, I will have people do a card sorting and coding activity. On index cards, I will also print out some of the responses to open-ended questions that asked students why they chose one activity over the other when given a choice. I will get people to read and group the responses (i.e. do some open coding) then ask them what they think about these data. I will end by asking participants whether any of the data that I presented might lead them to change the way they use research papers in their teaching.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
Critical analysis of figures is as helpful as reading the whole paper: The data-centric ‘Figure Facts’ activity leads students to practice graph interpretation and helps them understand research papers better
University College, 1110
Learning to interpret scholarly literature is critical training for evidence-based decision makers, including scientists. In a second-year organismal biology class, we compared the efficacy of two different activities, a ‘Summary Activity’ and ‘Figure Facts’, in directing students to practice graph interpretation and in promoting their comprehension of selected research papers. For the Summary Activity, students briefly summarized a research paper, presumably reading as they normally would. In contrast, the data-centric Figure Facts activity prompted students to interpret the article’s figures and link methods to results, and was previously shown to improve students’ data interpretation ability in an advanced neurobiology course (Round and Campbell 2013).
In this study, after each activity, students self-reported reading behaviours via surveys and answered multiple choice questions measuring their understanding of the articles. Significantly more students engaged in figure interpretation when completing Figure Facts. Students also spent more time on the Results section and less time on the Abstract when doing Figure Facts compared to the Summary Activity. On multiple choice questions, students who prepared with Figure Facts outperformed peers who did summaries. Most students reported highly desirable learning gains from Figure Facts. However, when choosing to complete either activity, most students chose whichever they tried first. We conclude that a simple data-centred reading tool can compel students to practice data interpretation and enhance their grasp of scientific literature.
Round, J. E., & Campbell, A. M. (2013). Figure Facts: encouraging undergraduates to take a data-centered approach to reading primary literature. CBE—Life Sciences Education, 12(1), 39-46.