“I love writing….but not in this technical style!” Here are some coaching tips…
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Science is a very public process. Our behavior courses are designed to guide students in gaining writing skills, starting with a journalistic style and working up to a technical style.
For example, in the beginner’s course (WFSC 422/632), we focus on short communications. This is because keepers and docents at zoos usually need to learn to talk in sound bytes. The information provided needs to educate as well as entertain, for an audience with a short attention span.
In the intermediate course (WFSC 622), we add in the additional skill of writing essays in the style of an hourglass (general, specific, general) as would be effective giving a “toastmaster’s” speech at the luncheon meeting of a civic group.
In the advanced course (WFSC 620), we take the hourglass format one step further, to writing for peer-reviewed journals.
This progression of skill development may not be immediately apparent for students who have not benefited from writing instruction in the courses leading up to these behavior courses. We have been reminding each other that this culture of technical communication needs to be learned. In some labs, it is a tacit (hidden) understanding that undergrad and grad school is all about learning professional skills of communication.
So this post is our place to share coaching tips on the resources available and the coaching services provided to promote learning technical writing skills.
Bibliographies are an important part of the process. I can’t keep information from the scientific journals organized in my head without writing an annotated bibliography. So, I highly encourage students to also learn and use this tool!
For beginners at the undergrad level, the Writing Center recommends this webtool:
The reason I like Endnotes, is because I cannot find the articles that I want using the web-tools like Google Scholar, or bibme. They might be good for general topics, but miss most of the really interesting behavior information.
When you are in ISI Web of Science, use the “Marked list” to automatically download your references (including abstracts and keywords) to Endnotes. Add in your own notes, where you paraphrase the content of the article. Voila, you have a bibiliography that helps organize the information in your head and for your writing activities.
One of the hardest things new students find is getting used to the keywords. You might think all the new vocabulary that you are learning in our behavior courses are just “jargon”….ways that scientists keep their knowledge obscure in highly technical terms. Think of it in another way…this is a way that scientists retrieve information. Learning the jargon, is learning the keywords that are most useful in doing literature searches.
This is how you, too, can stand on the shoulders of giants! No need to worry if you do not understand a particular keyword. I find Wikipedia provides a good glossary for most of the words we find useful in animal behavior.
Watch out! Some of the words we use in everyday language have been borrowed and have acquired different meanings in the technical world of science. For example, “fitness” has a different meaning for those who work out at Gold’s Gym, compared to the Behavioral Ecologists who study cooperation in non-human animals!
July 16th, 2009 at 8:09 am
Science is a very public process. Our behavior courses are designed to guide students in gaining writing skills, starting with a journalistic style and working up to a technical style.
For example, in the beginner’s course (WFSC 422/632), we focus on short communications. This is because keepers and docents at zoos usually need to learn to talk in sound bytes. The information provided needs to educate as well as entertain, for an audience with a short attention span.
In the intermediate course (WFSC 622), we add in the additional skill of writing essays in the style of an hourglass (general, specific, general) as would be effective giving a “toastmaster’s” speech at the luncheon meeting of a civic group.
In the advanced course (WFSC 620), we take the hourglass format one step further, to writing for peer-reviewed journals.
This progression of skill development may not be immediately apparent for students who have not benefited from writing instruction in the courses leading up to these behavior courses. We have been reminding each other that this culture of technical communication needs to be learned. In some labs, it is a tacit (hidden) understanding that undergrad and grad school is all about learning professional skills of communication.
So this post is our place to share coaching tips on the resources available and the coaching services provided to promote learning technical writing skills.
July 16th, 2009 at 8:14 am
Bibliographies are an important part of the process. I can’t keep information from the scientific journals organized in my head without writing an annotated bibliography. So, I highly encourage students to also learn and use this tool!
For beginners at the undergrad level, the Writing Center recommends this webtool:
http://www.bibme.org/
Personally, I prefer Endnotes, which can be downloaded from the CIS
software center (free for TAMU students).
https://software.tamu.edu/sell-unsecure/Login.aspx
July 16th, 2009 at 8:18 am
The reason I like Endnotes, is because I cannot find the articles that I want using the web-tools like Google Scholar, or bibme. They might be good for general topics, but miss most of the really interesting behavior information.
Try it for yourself….
http://scholar.google.com
and compare with what you get when you use the ISI Web of Science database at:
http://library.tamu.edu
When you are in ISI Web of Science, use the “Marked list” to automatically download your references (including abstracts and keywords) to Endnotes. Add in your own notes, where you paraphrase the content of the article. Voila, you have a bibiliography that helps organize the information in your head and for your writing activities.
July 16th, 2009 at 8:25 am
One of the hardest things new students find is getting used to the keywords. You might think all the new vocabulary that you are learning in our behavior courses are just “jargon”….ways that scientists keep their knowledge obscure in highly technical terms. Think of it in another way…this is a way that scientists retrieve information. Learning the jargon, is learning the keywords that are most useful in doing literature searches.
This is how you, too, can stand on the shoulders of giants! No need to worry if you do not understand a particular keyword. I find Wikipedia provides a good glossary for most of the words we find useful in animal behavior.
http://www.wikipedia.org/
Watch out! Some of the words we use in everyday language have been borrowed and have acquired different meanings in the technical world of science. For example, “fitness” has a different meaning for those who work out at Gold’s Gym, compared to the Behavioral Ecologists who study cooperation in non-human animals!
July 20th, 2009 at 9:22 am
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