Dr. Lisa McDonnell is an Associate Teaching Professor at UC San Diego and was on the Online with LSE webinar series to discuss a recent publication about “Identifying Troublesome Jargon in Biology.” I like how Online with LSE is now having graduate students moderate the sessions! McDonnell began by highlighting how there is a lot of discipline-specific concepts and technical vocabulary and desegregating concepts and jargon results in improved conceptual understanding and correct explanations. For this study, the goal was to “gain a better understanding of what constitutes problematic technical vocabulary” and had three research questions. McDonnell collected student survey data from Cell Biology and Genetics courses on 72 terms. They collected 1276 responses from 272 students. Respondents were asked if they recognized a term, think they know what it means, and can provide a definition for the term. The research team, since this work was a collaboration with several researchers, reviewed for perceived understanding and common errors. They grouped terms into categories: incompatible ambiguity with a use in everyday English as well as in biology, information, molecular, organelle, practice, and process. The perceived understanding varied from 0% to 100%; and apparently “epitope” and “assay” were not understood very often! Molecular terms were perceived as the least understood (68%) and information & ambiguous terms were perceived as the most understood (91%). For information and molecular 40% of the terms were correct but a significantly lower perceived understanding for molecular (68%) vs. information (91%). Ambiguous terms were the lowest correctly explained (~30%). In general, students overestimated their understanding of terms, especially for information and incompatible ambiguity terms. In general, students did better with molecular terms. This is information that is good to know as we teach molecular biology courses. Good news?! I’m not sure! We typically teach juniors, seniors, and graduate students. How would this study look with our students? The question and answer part of the session had several questions to clarify the rationale for how correctness assessment was evaluated. Some categories had a lower number of terms. McDonnell discussed how the coding of terms was approached and how statistical cut offs were set. An interesting question asked was how would incentivizing completion of the survey (maybe with points or as an assignment) change completion of the survey or accuracy. I also thought that how McDonnell described the evolution of the study from a previous study was informative as it helped me learn the history and what others have done in this field. McDonnell emphasized that both instructors and students need to be aware of what terms they may have trouble with and provide opportunities to check terminology. Early practice and feedback to identify problematic terms and correct usage were mentioned and examples provided. One I like was having students identify terms that have been used incorrectly and why. Another activity was providing feedback and having students reflect on the use of terms. McDonnell talked about having more conversations about the importance of language and that it is a challenge. I think this is critical even in (or more so?) in upper-division courses full of jargon. As I think about BIT 295 Biotechnology and Sustainability, how can I make sure we provide practice for language fluency with feedback? McDonnell also spoke about terminology that may be problematic for English language learners (ELL); however, more studies are needed. McDonnell also clarified that while flashcards may be helpful for memorizing terms, correct usage is critical for understanding and communication of science. We just watched wonderful video presentations from the Yeast Metabolic Engineering course, and last Friday talked about Writing to Learn and Writing to Communicate. I love listening to students explaining science to us in their own words. I believe it demonstrates several course goals and learning objectives for the courses we teach. How can we introduce what McDonnell describes as “a discourse community”? McDonnell suggested creating a culture in the class that encourages looking up terms and checking for understanding. Practicing communicating and correct use of terms is important for professional discourse and also an opportunity to involve students in scholarly communities early. I am glad I watched this session to learn about how much terminology we have in biology courses and how we approach teaching troublesome jargon. McDonnell said that the focus should not be on defining the terms; the focus should be on correctly using terms to communicate effectively.
