Tonight I watched the ASMCUE 2022 microbrew entitled “Microbrew. Blogging about biotechnology: Replacing the term paper with an accessible writing style assignment.” Chadene Tremaglio and Michelle Kraczkowski, assistant professors at the University of Saint Joseph in CT were the presenters. Their attendee learning objective was to “gain a framework for a new project/paper assignment to be utilized in your own courses, and a new perspective on the positive impacts of blog-style writing on critical thinking and student engagement.” They described the University of Saint Joseph at West Hartford, CT as a private, regional college with about 2000 students, 80% female and 34% underrepresented. The institution just became co-ed. The course they teach is Introduction to Cellular Biology (biomolecules to biotechnology) and is a first semester pre-nursing, pre-health, biology course. The presenters spoke about the challenges of a writing assignment in a course that enrolls students with varying writing skills. They explained that blog-style writing has been shown to improve student perceptions of learning, develop critical thinking skills, and increase self-motivation. The course has six units and there are four worksheets due before having a workshop on writing skills and avoiding plagiarism. The final blog post is due at the end of the semester. The example of student work they shared was summarizing the findings of a scientific article with an engaging and accessible narrative. The presenters reported that they were not “overwhelmed by the paper and generally benefitted.” Plots of paper and exam grades suggested that the assignment was “on par” with difficulty level of other assignments. The timing of the assignment after Thanksgiving break is a challenge. They have since modified the four worksheets and reduced it to two that help students analyze their articles. They have incorporated UDL principles and a peer-review step. Heather Townsend moderated this session and mentioned that her favorite slide was the one with challenges an dhow they addressed them. During the questions and answer session, the presenters explained that they have limited the number of articles. For example, with eleven students they split them into two groups with two different articles. A second question from the audience was if the presenters had tested students on journal article concepts. Not yet, though the presenters mentioned some modifications they are doing. They also spoke about scaling up and using peer support to facilitate feedback.
