193 W22 Ofili

ENGL 193: Communication in the Sciences – Winter Term 2022

Instructor

Patricia Ofili

p3ofili@uwaterloo.ca

Send me an email from Monday to Friday, and I will respond within 48 hours.

Office Hours: Tue & Thur: 1:30pm - 2:00pm

Course Overview

Course Description. ENG 193 Communications in the Life Sciences.

The sciences expand our understanding of the world by posing questions and by collecting evidence to address these questions. In order to have an impact, the information and insights generated by scientific research also need to be effectively communicated whether to publics, policymakers, or to other scientists. This course will teach written and oral communication tailored to the life/physical sciences. The course will give you an opportunity to shape your oral, written, and visual communication skills through iterative design processes that emphasize student agency and confidence, individually and collaboratively. You will craft texts for internal and external audiences, including scientists, government stakeholders, affected communities, or broader publics. You will learn a variety of genres such as research reports, grant proposals, conference papers, conference posters, public talks, blog post, and/or town halls. Overall, this course will help to enhance your capacity to share research findings, communicate effectively and ethically, and thereby, bring about effective changes.

Course Overview and Objectives:

Communication is essential for scientists, and scientists communicate in many different ways for many different audiences. In this course, we will introduce you to a variety of ways scientists communicate, giving you the basis to begin sharing the importance of science in more tailored, concise, and effective ways. By the end of the course, you should be able to:

Design and persuasively deliver scientific communications to expert and non-expert audiences;
Differentiate and justify the language, content, and manner of delivery when communicating scientific information;
Apply best practices in collaboration and peer review, including giving and receiving feedback in support of revision;
Practice research processes to find, assess, document, incorporate, and cite research resources and communicate research findings;
Reflect critically about science communication, its purposes, and ethical dimensions.

Required Texts and Materials:

Nelson-McDermott, Catherine, Laura Buzzard, and Don LePan. Science and Society: An Anthology for Readers and Writers. Broadview, 2014.

Michael D. Jones1 & Deserai Anderson Crow, “How can we use the ‘science of stories’ to produce persuasive scientiﬁc stories?” Palmgrave Communications 3, Article No: 35 (2017). Available at http://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-017

Jeanne Fahnestock. “Accommodating Science: The Rhetorical Life of Scientific Facts.” Available at http://wcx.sagepub.com/content/3/3/275

Joshua Teperowski Monrad. “Ethical Considerations for Epidermic Vaccine Trials.” Available at https://jme.bmj.com

Aristotle’s “Rhetoric.” Available at www.jstor

KJELDSEN, E, JENS. “What the Metaphor Could Not Tell Us About the Prime Minister’s Bicycle Helmet Rhetorical Criticism of Visual Political Rhetoric.” Available at https://www.academia.edu/2429331/What_the_Metaphor_Could_Not_Tell_Us_About_the_Prime_Minister_s_Bicycle_Helmet_Rhetor

Communication in the Sciences

Course Assignments and Requirements

Assignment and Evaluation Overview

In this course a passing grade is 50%. You will need to complete the required assignments and activities. In addition, due to the importance of the revision process in writing and communication design, there is no exam:

Discussions Posts/Contributions (Comments and peer reviews) – 15%
Blogposts – 5%
Report: State of Science – 20%
Grant Proposal – 20%
Conference Paper – 20%
Public Communication or Engagement: Group Poster/PowerPoint Presentation – 15%
One-page Final Reflection of the feedback received and the impact of those feedback/course – 5%

Assignment Descriptions

Here is the interesting thing about this course: the assignments will draw upon a range of genres of communication that can be employed in scientific writing. You’re going to present your work to a bunch of different audiences. It might be to other scientists, it might be to non-scientists who are just interested in learning about your research, or it might be to people who will give you money to complete your research. We have provided a list of articles and topics that can be used, and we have developed this list in consultation with faculty members in the sciences. If you’d like to choose other texts, you’ll have to have them approved.

Contribution Evaluation

Contribution isn’t just about posting things on Learn discussion boards. Think of the discussion board posts and engagements as evaluations of some aspects of inter-personal communication. Generally, the expectation is that you treat the discussion board as a professional/virtual classroom space and your peers as your colleagues.

100 points–Exceptional: Frequent, substantive, formative, and original contributions to the discussion board; consistently engaged and participatory comments; outstanding peer feedback

90-99 points–Excellent: Only minor exceptions to the criteria described above

80-89 points–Good: Regular contributor to discussions; consistent engagement; good peer feedback

60-79 points–Satisfactory: Occasional contributions and inconsistent engagement; good peer feedback

50 - 59points–Marginal: Minimal contributions and/or significant lack of engagement

50 points–Failure: Repeated disrespectful engagement with others; consistent lack of commitment and/or effort

Assignments Overview

It’s a little early for original research, so we’re going to begin with getting you up to speed on engaging with other scientific/non-scientific texts. You will choose an article from Nelson-McDermott, Catherine, Laura Buzzard, and Don LePan. Science and Society: An Anthology for Readers and Writers, and you will work with this article for your report. You’re going to summarize and communicate your report of this article to both expert and public audiences by tearing it apart, critiquing it, identifying a gap in it, and putting your ideas together in an essay. Afterward, you will need to identify a problem in the society, do a research on how to resolve that problem, design a grant proposal to help you raise money for your research (virtual research), and come up with your findings. You will write a conference paper that is argumentative in native to help you persuade your audience on why this problem you are engaged with is important. To engage with the assignments of Report, Grant Proposal, and Conference Paper, imagine you’re a Research Assistant (RA), and these exercises will be the work you’re learning about for the term you are hired to work on as an RA.

Introduce Yourself

Write a short introduction of yourself, more like short biography (that may include pictures or memes) or a short video of about 5 minutes that will give us an insight into your personhood. This bio should be no more than 500 words and should include your name, where you are from, degree title, hobbies, and anything else that is interesting about you.

State of Science Report

Communication for (Physical) Sciences

Your first major assignment will be a report on the state of science of the article you have chosen from Nelson-McDermott, Catherine, Laura Buzzard, and Don LePan. Science and Society: An Anthology for Readers and Writers. Broadview, 2014. Your goal here is to understand what research is presented in the article you have chosen and how it is situated in a broader research effort. Which other experts are working on this topic? What are they saying? What is the significance of the article that you have chosen for this research topic?

First, you will want to read and re-read your article. You will need to know the general field, the topic of the article, and why that topic is important. Properly cite your sources to avoid plagiarism using the MLA or APA citation format, depending on which format you prefer as long as you are consistent. Draft your report and post it into your group discussion board for peer review and use the peer feedback to edit your work before posting it to the drop box. You should be sure that your assignment is:

About 4-5 pages in length,
double-spaced,
12pt font.

Grant Proposal: Crowdfunding Your Research

You will complete this assignment on your own. You will first identify an important problem in the society you will like to find a solution to. You can decide to work on the gap you may have identified in your report. That means you will conduct some research (virtual) on ways that you plan to help solve this problem. Choose an idea that has not been over flogged already, which is relatively new. For this assignment you will create a crowdfunding proposal. To do this, first choose an appropriate platform for the kind of work you’re doing. In most cases, if you want to fund a scientific project, you might use Experiment.com. But you can also use Kickstarter.com, or similar platforms. Just be sure you have a good rationale for why you’ve chosen a particular platform to try to fund your research. You will submit your draft to your group discussion board for peer review. You will use the peer feedback to edit your paper before you submit it to the drop box.

What will you need to complete your project? You will be required to develop a strong argument that justifies your research proposal, why you think it is worth pursuing, and draw up a budget. You will also include a short paragraph identifying your audience and describe how you will effectively communicate your plan to this audience. How will you get folks to fund you? Include that information and anything else you think is important regarding why you chose the project or platform that you did (e.g., this is a project you’re actually hoping to crowdfund). You should be sure that your assignment is:

About 4-5 pages in length,
double-spaced,
12pt font.

Criteria for Evaluation

Includes all relevant information indicated above.
Includes all relevant sections of the proposal for your platform of choice (e.g., proposal text, budget, rewards, etc.).
Clear statement of purpose, following CARS model, and supporting evidence is included.
The budget should be tailored to your project and audience.
Technical presentation (typed, well formatted, consistent fonts, etc).
Spelling and grammar (including complete sentences)

Conference Paper

Undertake a library research to validate your thesis statement. This paper is based on your research finding that serves to prove that the problem you are interested in solving is one that is valid and impactful. Write a 4 – 5-page conference paper that you will post to the discussion board for peer review. You will use the peer review to edit and refine your paper before the final submission to the drop box.

Your paper will be assessed on how clear your ideas are, how logical your arguments are, how clear and sharp your thesis statement is, how well you support your points with credible sources, how strong your introduction and conclusion are, and how well you have edited your work. You should be sure that your assignment is:

About 4-5 pages in length,
double-spaced,
12pt font.

Public Communication Group Assignment

This will be a group assignment. Imagine you’ve been invited to give a talk at your local library about your work. Your audience could be anyone: other scientists, people interested in your topic, students, families looking for an educational opportunity, etc. Demographics include a range of learners, and you’re going to have to figure out how to communicate your complex subject to a wide audience. You will first need to decide what aspect of your topic you think will appeal to your audience. What is particularly interesting about your work and what do you most want to share with others? Prepare a slideshow/power point or some other kind of multimedia to use for showing your group project in the discussion board. Identify a controversial topic in your group, brainstorm on how to address the problem at the center of the controversy, share the major ideas in the topic among yourselves, each person should do a write up of 1 page about their chosen aspect of the topic, and do a power point that utilizes more of visual rhetoric than words for presenting each idea.

Criteria for Evaluation

Clear topic with a narrow focus.
Well-organized (arrangement!) presentation with clear narrative arc.
Clear statement of purpose, following CARS model, and supporting evidence is included.
Creative deployment of visual rhetoric.
Group cohesion, while showing what each individual worked on.

Course Rules

Late assignments will have marks docked if you were not granted an extension. To be granted an extension, you must have a compelling reason (e.g., medically documented illness or other related issues). If you know you will need an extension, let me know at least 48 hours prior to the due date. If you are concerned about your grades, contact me within the first 3/4 of the term; the last quarter of the term will not provide sufficient time to markedly improve your final grade. Finally, I will not grant an incomplete in the course; if you have concerns about completing your term please let me know as soon as possible.

Communication in the Sciences | Academic Integrity

In order to maintain a culture of academic integrity, members of the University of Waterloo community are expected to promote honesty, trust, fairness, respect and responsibility. See the UWaterloo Academic Integrity webpage and the Arts Academic Integrity webpage for more information.

Discipline

A student is expected to know what constitutes academic integrity, to avoid committing academic offences, and to take responsibility for his/her actions. A student who is unsure whether an action constitutes an offence, or who needs help in learning how to avoid offences (e.g., plagiarism, cheating) or about rules for group work/collaboration should seek guidance from the course professor, academic advisor, or the Undergraduate Associate Dean. When misconduct has been `found to have occurred, disciplinary penalties will be imposed under Policy 71 - Student Discipline. For information on categories of offenses and types of penalties, students should refer to Policy 71 - Student Discipline. For typical penalties check Guidelines for the Assessment of Penalties(https://uwaterloo.ca/secretariat-general-counsel/policiesprocedures-guidelines/guidelines/guidelines-assessment-penalties).

Grievance

A student who believes that a decision affecting some aspect of his/her university life has been unfair or unreasonable may have grounds for initiating a grievance. Read Policy 70 - Student Petitions and Grievances, Section 4 (https://uwaterloo.ca/secretariat-general-counsel/policies-procedures-guidelines/policy-70). When in doubt, please be certain to contact the department’s administrative assistant who will provide further assistance.

Appeals

A decision made or penalty imposed under Policy 70, Student Petitions and Grievances (other than a petition) or Policy 71, Student Discipline may be appealed if there is a ground. A student who believes he/she has a ground for an appeal should refer to Policy 72, Student Appeals (https://uwaterloo.ca/secretariatgeneral-counsel/policies-procedures-guidelines/policy-72). Note for Students with Disabilities, The AccessAbility Services office, located on the first floor of the Needles Hall extension (NH 1401), collaborates with all academic departments to arrange appropriate accommodations for students with disabilities without compromising the academic integrity of the curriculum. If you require academic accommodations to lessen the impact of your disability, please register with the AS office at the beginning of each academic term.

Communication for (Physical) Sciences | Communication in the Sciences

It is your responsibility to email me in advance regarding any confusions you might have about due dates. Schedule is subject to change.