Writing Skills Development for Graduate Studies and Career Readiness in Science and Aging Fields: A Case Study Approach.

Increasing the number of racially and ethnically underrepresented students who pursue scientific graduate studies in programs focusing on science and aging offers an opportunity to increase the number of aging specialists while simultaneously promoting diversity in the research labor market and supporting new ideas. This case study aims to better understand how students participating in an academic preparatory program experience a writing class contextualized within (1) students' writing background and (2) students' future ambitions related to science and aging. The individually-tailored writing class was taught as a critical component of a comprehensive educational program that targets underrepresented racial and ethnic minority undergraduate students who are interested in pursuing scientific graduate studies in fields related to aging. The researchers conducted semi-structured qualitative interviews with students (n = 4) enrolled in the 24-month fellowship training program, which included participation in the writing course during the summer prior to their senior year of undergraduate education. All participants were young adult college students who identified as Black or African American and female. Using thematic coding, statements about professional writing skills were divided into four primary themes: (1) prior experiences, (2) class experiences, (3) future goals and ambitions, and (4) structural considerations. These themes suggest potential implications for effective interventions aimed to advance the writing skills and academic and career readiness of racially and ethnically diverse students entering fields of science and aging.

Why science education is more important than most scientists think.

The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed that a shockingly large fraction of the public is willing to ignore scientific judgements on issues such a vaccines and mask wearing. For far too many, scientific findings are viewed as what scientists believe, rather than as the product of an elaborate community process that produces reliable knowledge. This widespread misunderstanding should serve as a wake-up call for scientists, clearly demonstrating that the standard way that we teach science - as a large collection of "facts" that scientists have discovered about the world - needs major change. Three more ambitious and important goals for science education at all levels are outlined. In order of increasing difficulty, these are: (1) to provide all adults with an ability to investigate scientific problems as scientists do, using logic, experiment, and evidence; (2) to provide all adults with an understanding of how the scientific enterprise works - and why they should therefore trust the consensus judgements of science on issues like smoking, vaccination, and climate change; and (3) to provide all adults with the habit of solving their everyday problems as scientists do, using logic, experiment, and evidence. Although examples exist for attaining all of these goals, extensive education research will be needed to discover how best to teach the last two. I argue that such an effort is urgent, and that it can best begin by focusing on the introductory courses in biology and other science disciplines at the university level.

Preprint articles as a tool for teaching data analysis and scientific communication.

The skill of analyzing and interpreting research data is central to the scientific process, yet it is one of the hardest skills for students to master. While instructors can coach students through the analysis of data that they have either generated themselves or obtained from published articles, the burgeoning availability of preprint articles provides a new potential pedagogical tool. We developed a new method in which students use a cognitive apprenticeship model to uncover how experts analyzed a paper and compare the professional's cognitive approach to their own. Specifically, students first critique research data themselves and then identify changes between the preprint and final versions of the paper that were likely the results of peer review. From this activity, students reported diverse insights into the processes of data presentation, peer review, and scientific publishing. Analysis of preprint articles is therefore a valuable new tool to strengthen students' information literacy and understanding of the process of science.

Absence makes the mind grow stronger - Educating in a pandemic and beyond.

With more than one academic year into the pandemic, it is timely to consider the lessons we learnt, and how they could shape education in the future. Papers from around the globe, reflecting on the directions we took and could take, were published in the FEMS Microbiology Letters virtual Thematic Issue 'Educating in a pandemic and beyond' in October 2021. Its content is reviewed here to facilitate discussions within the professional community. Online platforms and tools, that allowed a rapid emergency response, are covered, as well as enhancing student engagement, complementing and blending in-person activities with online elements for more flexible and accessible learning opportunities, the need for educator training, and improving science literacy overall and microbiology literacy specifically. As we go forward, in order to benefit from blended and flexible learning, we need to select our approaches based on evidence, and mindful of the potential impact on learners and educators. Education did not only continue during the pandemic, but it evolved, leading us into the future.

Enhancing science literacy and communication among the next generation of scientists in an online learning environment.

Many large, undergraduate science courses, which still heavily rely on traditional lecture-based dissemination of content, passive learning, and exam-based assessments, have been forced online due to the Covid-19 pandemic. To address the challenges facing students in regards to engagement, self-directed learning, and the development of soft skills, we modified a large, lecture-based third-year undergraduate biochemistry course at the University of Toronto to foster active learning through interactive e-modules. We also adjusted the evaluation model to focus on the development of reflection, critical thinking, science literacy, and communication.

Tiny Earth: A Big Idea for STEM Education and Antibiotic Discovery.

The world faces two seemingly unrelated challenges-a shortfall in the STEM workforce and increasing antibiotic resistance among bacterial pathogens. We address these two challenges with Tiny Earth, an undergraduate research course that excites students about science and creates a pipeline for antibiotic discovery.

Active learning-based STEM education for in-person and online learning.

The COVID-19 global pandemic has forced the higher education sector to transition to an uncharted remote-learning format. This offers an opportunity to adopt active learning, which increases students' performance compared to lectures, narrows achievement gaps for underrepresented students, and promotes equity and inclusivity, as the basis of STEM education.

Science as collaborative knowledge generation.

The COVID-19 pandemic points to the need for scientists to pool their efforts in order to understand this disease and respond to the ensuing crisis. Other global challenges also require such scientific cooperation. Yet in academic institutions, reward structures and incentives are based on systems that primarily fuel the competition between (groups of) scientific researchers. Competition between individual researchers, research groups, research approaches, and scientific disciplines is seen as an important selection mechanism and driver of academic excellence. These expected benefits of competition have come to define the organizational culture in academia. There are clear indications that the overreliance on competitive models undermines cooperative exchanges that might lead to higher quality insights. This damages the well-being and productivity of individual researchers and impedes efforts towards collaborative knowledge generation. Insights from social and organizational psychology on the side effects of relying on performance targets, prioritizing the achievement of success over the avoidance of failure, and emphasizing self-interest and efficiency, clarify implicit mechanisms that may spoil valid attempts at transformation. The analysis presented here elucidates that a broader change in the academic culture is needed to truly benefit from current attempts to create more open and collaborative practices for cumulative knowledge generation.

How Support of Early Career Researchers Can Reset Science in the Post-COVID19 World.

The COVID19 crisis has magnified the issues plaguing academic science, but it has also provided the scientific establishment with an unprecedented opportunity to reset. Shoring up the foundation of academic science will require a concerted effort between funding agencies, universities, and the public to rethink how we support scientists, with a special emphasis on early career researchers.