Collaborative Posters Develop Students’ Ability to Communicate about Undervalued Scientific Resources to Nonscientists

Abstract

Scientists are increasingly called upon to communicate with the public, yet most never receive formal training in this area. Public understanding is particularly critical to maintaining support for undervalued resources such as biological collections, research data repositories, and expensive equipment. We describe activities carried out in an inquiry-driven organismal biology laboratory course designed to engage a diverse student body using biological collections. The goals of this cooperative learning experience were to increase students’ ability to locate and comprehend primary research articles, and to communicate the importance of an undervalued scientific resource to nonscientists. Our results indicate that collaboratively created, research-focused informational posters are an effective tool for achieving these goals and may be applied in other disciplines or classroom settings.