I have designed five mock experiential research projects to complement lecture and lab. Each project represents specific activities typical of science professionals (graduate students, established scientists, and science journalists). Students complete these increasingly challenging projects in the following sequence:
Five Mock Experiential Research Projects
1.
Journal club
2.
Medical news journalism
3.
Disease review article
4.
Disease symposium seminar
5.
Laboratory report written as
a primary article
These
projects are designed with the assumption that incoming sophomore students
have minimal familiarity with grasping primary research literature. Projects
1 and 2 stress the comprehension and communication of one primary article.
Projects 3 and 4 stress the ability to integrate and communicate information
from several related primary articles. Project 5 develops the ability to
author oneâs own primary article. Together, the projects directly
bolster process-specific course goals, but they also indirectly support
content-specific course goals because they expand significantly on topics
covered in lecture and/or laboratory. To emphasize cooperative learning
and collaboration among students, four of these projects are group-based:
Projects 1, 3 and 4 involve groups of 3-5 students, and Project 5 is done
in pairs. Only Project 2 is individually completed.