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Advan. Physiol. Edu. 31: 167-175, 2007; doi:10.1152/advan.00111.2006
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ADV PHYSIOL EDUC 31:167-175, 2007
© 2007 American Physiological Society

HOW WE TEACH

Using explicit teaching to improve how bioscience students write to the lay public

Roger W. Moni1, Deanne H. Hryciw1, Philip Poronnik1 and Karen B. Moni2

1 Educational Research Unit, School of Biomedical Sciences, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
2 School of Education, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

Address for reprint requests and other correspondence: R. W. Moni, Educational Research Unit, School of Biomedical Sciences, The Univ. of Queensland, Brisbane 4072, Queensland, Australia (E-mail: r.moni{at}uq.edu.au)


   Abstract
TOP
 Abstract
Introduction
 CONTEXT AND RESEARCH METHODS
 RESULTS
 DISCUSSION
 REFERENCES
 
The media role model was recently developed to frame how science faculty members can teach their students to write more effectively to lay audiences (14). An Opinion Editorial (Op-Ed) was introduced as a novel assignment for final-year physiology and pharmacology undergraduates. This second phase of this study, reported here, demonstrated the efficacy of explicit teaching of the Op-Ed, using a one-shot, pre-/posttest research design. Baseline writing skills of students were determined from a communication assignment. Students were then explicitly taught how to write an Op-Ed and subsequently wrote an Op-Ed based on a recent, relevant scientific article. Most students achieved higher grades for their Op-Ed following explicit teaching [mean (SD) = 84.4% (9.1%), n = 216] compared with their communication assignment [mean (SD) = 74.7% (11.9%), n = 218]. Improvement in student writing was also evident by an increase in text readability, which mirrored the features of Op-Eds written by professional journalists. A survey of students (n = 142) indicated that most believed that the assignments were valuable and that their ability to write to a lay audience had improved. Members of the lay public were then surveyed for their opinions on student writing. Two assignments were selected from one student whose grades had improved after explicit teaching. Respondents (n = 78) indicated that the Op-Ed was easier to read than the communication assignment. Thus, explicit teaching of the Op-Ed improved the ability of students to write to members of the lay public.

Key words: public audience; scientific communication


   Introduction
TOP
 Abstract
 Introduction
CONTEXT AND RESEARCH METHODS
 RESULTS
 DISCUSSION
 REFERENCES
 
CLEAR AND EFFECTIVE WRITING is integral to the progress and dissemination of modern biological advances (13). In the broader community, effective communication between professional scientists and the lay public is essential for the well being of communities, e.g., in preventing disease and promoting health (15). In this article, "lay" is defined as nonexpert in the field of bioscience, specifically, physiology and pharmacology (3). However, the often complex and specialized language used by scientists does little to assist nonexperts in understanding the content or processes of modern science (4). It is the commercial media (not professional scientists) who are most active and effective in conveying advances in science to the lay public, through, for example, Opinion Editorial (Op-Ed) newspaper articles (6).

Poronnik and Moni (14) argued that universities are well positioned to teach future scientists as to how to more effectively communicate to nontechnical audiences. In the first phase of an action learning project, these authors developed the media role model to describe how the media acts as community gatekeepers of new scientific findings. They then used their model to frame the introduction of an innovative writing assessment task, an Op-Ed, for final-year physiology and pharmacology students. These students found the task challenging, but valuable, and further reported that their ability to write to the lay public had improved after explicit teaching and feedback around this assessment task. Most students demonstrated that they could write a high-quality Op-Ed drawn from a primary research article. However, these achievement data were only collected after explicit teaching of how to write an Op-Ed. Without a pretest of students' writing, it was not possible to demonstrate an improvement in students' writing following explicit teaching. Furthermore, opinions of the lay public were not sought, and, thus, the first phase results lacked input from the authentic target audience.

In the second phase of this project, the research team have implemented a one-shot, pret-/posttest research design (7) to explore the effect of explicit teaching on students' ability to communicate with the lay public. "Explicit teaching" refers to a method of direct instruction whereby faculty members systematically teach elements of writing in stages so that the teaching of one aspect of writing links to and builds on the previous, resulting in the cumulative development of knowledge and skills that enable more effective communication (11). Explicit teaching was selected because recent research has revealed that science students can learn how to write specific genres through this strategy in the context of authentic use (5). In addition, the opinions of lay members of the public were sought regarding the quality of student writing before and after explicit classroom teaching of the Op-Ed genre. This phase of the study was framed around the following three research questions:

  1. Does explicit teaching improve the ability of students to write effectively to a lay audience?
  2. What do students think about learning to write to lay audiences?
  3. Can members of the lay public recognize differences in the quality of students' writing before and after explicit teaching?


   CONTEXT AND RESEARCH METHODS
TOP
 Abstract
 Introduction
 CONTEXT AND RESEARCH METHODS
RESULTS
 DISCUSSION
 REFERENCES
 
Context
The action learning project.
An action learning design was adopted in this study because of the focus on improving the quality of teaching practice in physiology and pharmacology (9, 18). The articulation of the 2004 (first) phase (14) and the 2005 (second) phase reported here was framed by Kolb's experiential learning cycle (12). For the second phase of this project, the focus of research shifted from the introduction of the Op-Ed assessment task to the impact of explicit pedagogy of the task (Fig. 1). From the 2004 course experience, the authors recognized that most students achieved high grades in the Op-Ed assignment but that improvement in writing following explicit teaching was not clearly demonstrated. The 2005 phase was planned to include a communication assignment as a pretest of writing. Students would then be exposed to explicit teaching on writing an Op-Ed as the project intervention and subsequently required to complete an Op-Ed assignment as the posttest of writing. Student engagement in learning was supported by feedback on all assignments from the BIOM3006 lecturer. Our findings would then generate the next cycle of reflection and action by the authors to further improve the course.


Figure 1
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  		Fig. 1. Integration of the experiential learning cycles for faculty members and students in BIOM3006 from 2004 to 2005. Based on the 2004 course experience (14), the authors recognized that students achieved high grades in the Opinion Editorial (Op-Ed) assignment but that an improvement in writing following explicit teaching (ET) was not clearly demonstrated due to absence of a pretest. They then conceptualized and implemented an intervention, i.e., pretest writing via a communication assignment (CA), then explicit teaching of the Op-Ed genre, and then posttest writing using the Op-Ed assignment. Students actively engaged in learning to write by completing the assignments followed by feedback from the BIOM3006 lecturer.

 
The course and students.
Human Physiology and Pharmacology in Disease (BIOM3006) is a one-semester, final-year course offered in the Bachelor of Science degree program at The University of Queensland. It is taught from the School of Biomedical Sciences. The major focus of this course is to understand the physiological changes that underlie important human disease states and the pharmacological/genetic strategies used in their treatment. Students are required to integrate their knowledge from second- and third-level courses in physiology and pharmacology to consolidate an understanding of the interrelationship between the different disciplines in solving disease states. This is complemented by the goal to develop students' communication skills. There were 224 students enrolled in BIOM3006 in the Spring semester of 2005.

The communication assignment.
To measure students' ability to write to lay audiences before the explicit teaching intervention, the students individually completed a short written task (400 ± 10% words) called the communication assignment. This entailed reviewing an article from the New England Journal of Medicine entitled "Colonoscopic screening of average-risk women for colorectal neoplasia" (17), which was selected because of its recency and relevance to the course. The task requirements are shown in Table 1.


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  		Table 1. Description of the communication assignment

 
The communication assignment submissions (8% of the total course) were marked by the authors using a criteria-based assessment rubric (Table 2), which afforded specific feedback according to three criteria: 1) content (the key facts and concepts being determined by faculty members before the assignment was graded), 2) genre requirements, and 3) quality of writing. The criteria of content and genre requirements were constructed to match the three guide questions in the Introduction above.


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  		Table 2. Assessment rubric used to grade the communication assignment

 
The explicit teaching intervention.
The explicit teaching of writing stages includes 1) defining the content or subject matter of interest, 2) analyzing models of writing around this content, 3) instructing students about relevant grammar and conventions of writing, and 4) constructing appropriate criteria to assess student writing (11). In this study, the intervention entailed three elements, which were delivered sequentially. First, an introductory lecture provided the rationale, significance, and importance of the Op-Ed task for enhancing the learning of course content and writing skills. A subsequent interactive lecture was delivered by a professional journalist from the School of Journalism and Communication. This lecture detailed the rhetorical purpose, text structure, and writing style of the Op-Ed genre. Specific points were that the Op-Ed 1) is a short text aiming to inform readers of recent scientific advances; 2) represents a formulaic written genre broadly based on evoking readers' attention, interest, desire, conviction, and action (8); 3) uses an "inverted pyramid" structure in which the who, what, when, why, and how aspects of content are presented in the first paragraph; and 4) is written in an engaging plain English style targeting an audience with a reading age of ~12 yr. Students were taught to use and interpret "readability" algorithms using Micosoft Word, specifically, Flesch Reading Ease (FRE) scale (19). The FRE scale is a 100-point scale (with 0 = very hard and 100 = easy) with plain English being 63.5. Students were informed that these "readability" measures refer to the ease of understanding determined by surface text features that influence readers' decoding of texts rather than the complex cognitive process of comprehension (10, 19). Second, students were given access to professional Op-Ed pieces published in Australian newspapers (The Australian and The Courier Mail). Finally, as a means to explicating the task requirements, the assessment rubric for the Op-Ed was explicitly taught to students.

The Op-Ed assignment.
Following the explicit teaching phase, students individually wrote an Op-Ed (400 ± 10% words) drawn from a New England Journal of Medicine article entitled "Combination of isosorbide dinitrate and hydralazine in African-Americans with heart failure" (20). The task is described in Table 3. The subject matter of this second article was also relevant to the course and (being from the same journal) complied with the same editorial guidelines. When the trigger articles for the communication and Op-Ed assignments were calculated using Word, the FRE scores were 8.9 and 14.4, respectively. Both of these scores are well below the definition of plain English, and thus both texts were complex to decode. The triggers were also very similar in word length, percentage of passive voice, and paragraph, sentence, and word length. The Op-Ed (12% of total course) was marked by one of the authors using the rubric (Table 4). The criteria were the same as, and the description of grades very similar to, the communication assignment. The minor difference in the description of grades reflected differences in the requirements of the two written assignments.


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  		Table 3. Description of the Opinion Editorial

 

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  		Table 4. Assessment rubric used to grade the Opinion Editorial

 
Research Methods
Analysis of students' writing.
Improvement in student writing was defined principally by an increase in grades (expressed as a percentage) for each assignment. The mean grades for the communication and Op-Ed assignments were compared using a paired t-test. This served as a measure of the inferred treatment effect due to explicit teaching.

A second measure of improved writing was a decrease in the FRE score, with the FRE score being a global index of the surface complexity of texts. Students were asked to submit their communication and Op-Ed assignments electronically for surface text analysis. These were all analyzed using the Microsoft Word readability algorithm to measure the FRE score, the percentage of text written in the passive voice, and the number of paragraphs, sentences per paragraph, words per sentence, and characters per word. Because the individual metrics (percent passive voice and paragraph, sentence, and word complexity) contribute to the FRE score, an improvement of writing would also be reflected in a decrease in some or all of these metrics. Descriptive statistics (means, SDs) were used to compare Op-Eds written by BIOM3006 students with those written by professional journalists. For the latter, 20 articles on current issues in the biomedical sciences were selected from two broadsheet newspapers: The Australian and The Courier Mail.

Student opinion surveys.
An opinion survey was administered to students after they completed the Op-Ed assignment but before grades were returned. It consisted of seven closed items and the following question: "When completing the Op-Ed, what assistance was the most useful?"

Poorly designed surveys can be unreliable research instruments because they are prone to patterns of uncritical responses from disengaged respondents who might answer with identical responses for all items. The authors decided that such responses should be rejected from the survey data. To detect these responses and thus improve the validity of the survey, closed items included a mix of questions worded affirmatively or negatively.

Students responded to the closed items on a Likert rating scale from 1 to 6, where 1 = very strongly disagree, 2 = strongly disagree, 3 = neither agree nor disagree, 4 = agree, 5 = strongly agree, and 6 = very strongly agree. Descriptive statistics for each item of the survey data included only medians ± interquartile ranges. The nonparametric Wilcoxon signed-rank test was used to estimate whether the survey data median scores were different from 3 on the scale (i.e., neither agree nor disagree). Statistical significance was represented by P values, which were calculated using GraphPad Prism version 4. The internal consistency of all survey items was measured using Cronbach's {alpha}-coefficient using SPSS version 10.0 (Macintosh). {alpha}-Values normally range from 0 to 1, with {alpha} of 0.8 or higher indicating that survey items reliably measure related themes or constructs on which the survey questions are based. Students were informed about the purposes of the opinion survey and advised that their participation was voluntary and anonymous, that they could withdraw from the study at any time, and that their decision would not affect grades for the course. These details were also written on the front of the survey instrument.

Opinion survey for the public.
A communication assignment (Table 5) and an Op-Ed assignment (Table 6) were both selected from one student who had shown a large improvement in their writing, being 56% and 90%, respectively. The FRE index and metrics of these examples were typical of assignments from the whole cohort. With the student author's permission and all identifying cues removed, the communication and Op-Ed assignments were presented as examples of student writing along with surveys administered to members of the public, many of whom lived near the university. Surveys included demographic information (gender, age group, current employment, and highest educational qualification), the question "What is your main source of information about new scientific findings?," and a set of 10 closed survey items about both the communication and Op-Ed assignment examples. These surveys included instructions to respondents, a request for the consent of respondents, and the following orientation: "In the School of Biomedical Sciences (The University of Queensland), we teach students how to improve their writing. As an assignment, final-year Science students were asked to write two short articles on recent findings in biomedical research. You have been given two articles written by the same student. These articles are aimed at readers who are not biomedical scientists. Your opinions about each article will help us teach more effectively. In turn, this will help our students communicate more effectively with diverse groups of people."


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  		Table 5. Example communication assignment presented to members of the lay public

 

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  		Table 6. Example Opinion Editorial presented to members of the lay public

 
Respondents were also asked the following questions: "Which article (Communication Assignment or Op-Ed) was easier to read?" and "What made this article easier to read?"


   RESULTS
TOP
 Abstract
 Introduction
 CONTEXT AND RESEARCH METHODS
 RESULTS
DISCUSSION
 REFERENCES
 
Student Achievements for the Communication and Op-Ed Assignments
Grades were expressed as a percentage of the maximum grade for each assignment. For the communication assignment, the mean score (SD) was 74.7% (11.9%) (n = 218). Grades for the Op-Ed assignment had a mean score (SD) of 84.4% (9.1%) (n = 216). Although all students increased their raw scores from their communication to Op-Ed assignment, 57 students (26%) did not improve the percentage of maximum grades. This included 10 students receiving the same result and 47 students with a reduced grade. However, for students in the latter group, all but two students received grades of over 75% for their communication assignment and, therefore, were already competent writers.

Text Analysis of the Communication and Op-Ed Assignments
Most students submitted their assignments for surface text analysis using Word readability statistics (communication assignment: n = 196, 90% of students; Op-Ed assignment: n = 210, 96% of students). The means and SDs of readability indexes and metrics for the students' communication and Op-Ed assignments and for 20 professional Op-Eds are shown in Table 7. For the FRE index and all metrics, students' communication and Op-Ed assignments were very significantly different (P < 0.0001), with all measures reflecting a relative decrease in the textual complexity of the Op-Eds. As determined by the FRE scores, most of the students' Op-Eds were as easy to decode as those written by professional journalists. Student and professional Op-Eds were significantly different in the number of passive sentences, sentences per paragraph, and words per sentence.


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  		Table 7. Surface text analyses of student communication assignments, student Opinion Editorials, and Opinion Editorials written by professional journalists

 
Student Opinion Survey
One hundred and forty-two student opinion surveys (63%) were returned. Only one return was deemed invalid because all responses were marked as "3." The Cronbach's {alpha}-coefficient of the total seven-item survey was 0.9847, indicating very high reliability of survey items in measuring related themes.

Student responses from closed survey questions are shown in Fig. 2. Most students reported they understood the usefulness of more effectively communicating science to lay audiences (median = 4, P < 0.0001). However, as a cohort, there was neither agreement for nor against the notion that writing the communication and Op-Ed assignments was useful for their careers (median = 3, P = 0.1522). Writing these tasks helped the majority of students realize the difficulty in writing to nonprofessional readers (median = 4, P < 0.0001). Although most students understood the requirements of the assignments (median = 2.5, P = 0.0140), these tasks were challenging (median = 4, P < 0.0001). While most students reported that the communication and Op-Ed assignments were valuable learning experiences (median = 4, P = 0.0003), most students neither agreed nor disagreed that their writing had improved (median = 3, P = 0.0005). This apparent uncertainty may have been influenced by the fact that they had not yet received grades and feedback for their Op-Eds.


Figure 2
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  		Fig. 2. Student responses [median ± interquartile ranges (IQR)] to items of the following opinion survey: 1. I understood the usefulness of these tasks. 2. I did NOT think that completing these tasks was useful for my future career. 3. These tasks helped me realize the difficulty in writing to a nonprofessional person. 4. I did not understand the instructions of both tasks. 5. I found these exercises challenging. 6. These tasks provided me with a valuable learning experience. 7. After completing the CA and Op-Ed assignment, I believe that my writing has improved. *P < 0.05 (n = 142) based on the difference in median values from the scale point of 3 (neither disagree nor agree) using the nonparametric Wilcoxon signed-rank test.

 
Opinion Survey of the Public
Seventy-eight surveys (35%) were returned. The demographic information from the sample population was compared with the most recently available census figures (2001) from the state of Queensland (1) (Table 8). Males were underrepresented in the survey. The age distribution of respondents closely reflected the state figures, with 22% of the survey sample (vs. 26% for the state) represented in each 10-yr interval from 21 to 60 yr of age, i.e., 21–30, 31–40, 41–50, and 51–60 yr of age. The completion rate of high school education was also similar (68% in the sample and 72% in the state), as was the proportion of respondents possessing postsecondary qualifications (33% in the sample and 32% in the state). However, survey respondents had more formal education than most people in the state, with diplomas and bachelor degrees being more represented. This likely reflects the university locale in which the study was conducted. Seventy-nine percent of respondents reported their occupations. These included administrative (24%), retired (21%), home duties (10%), business (8%), and nonscience students (8%), with the rest from another 14 occupations. Fifty-three percent of respondents indicated that their main source of scientific knowledge was television, and 28% of respondents indicated newspapers. Other sources included the internet, "journals," family, doctor, radio, and magazines.


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  		Table 8. Comparison of demographic data from survey respondents compared with 2001 census figures from the state of Queensland

 
The survey data are summarized in Fig. 3. The Cronbach's {alpha}-coefficients of the total 10-item surveys were 0.9883 and 0.9831 for the communication and Op-Ed assignments, respectively. These indicated very high reliability in measuring related themes. For both the communication and Op-Ed assignments, respondents reported that the author tried to improve their knowledge of the areas of research represented in both articles (P < 0.0001) and that the information in the texts was correct (P < 0.0001). The Op-Ed was favored over the communication assignment in three items. It was 1) easier to understand, 2) better sustained interest throughout the article, and 3) perceived to change the way the reader thought about their own health, although this effect was statistically weak (P = 0.0150). In responding to the two open questions, 65% believed that the Op-Ed was easier to read than the communication assignment. Of these, 35 respondents reported that the Op-Ed used less scientific and medical terminology; had fewer statistics, thus making it easier to read; and that the structure ("shorter sentences," "more direct/concise," and "layout") made it easier to read.


Figure 3
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  		Fig. 3. Lay public responses (medians ± IQR) to items of the following opinion survey for both the CA and Op-Ed: 1. The author tried to improve my knowledge of this area of research. 2. The article was too long. 3. I believe the information in the article was correct. 4. The article was easy to understand. 5. My interest level was sustained throughout the article. 6. After reading the article, I now have a better understanding of colonoscopy (CA) or drug therapy (Op-Ed). 7. This information about colonoscopy (CA) or drug therapy (Op-Ed) is not important to me. 8. This information about colonoscopy (CA) or drug therapy (Op-Ed) is useful to me. 9. This article made me want to know about future developments in this area. 10. Reading this article has changed the way I think about my health. *P < 0.05 (n = 78) based on the difference in median values from the scale point of 3 (neither disagree nor agree) using the nonparametric Wilcoxon signed-rank test.

 
However, the content matter of the communication assignment (i.e., bowel cancer) was considered to be more important and useful than the content of the Op-Ed (i.e., drug therapy). Thus, the significance of the content matter to the readers outweighed the importance of text structure and surface features. Nevertheless, those respondents who reported that the Op-Ed was easier to read justified their decision based on structural elements of text rather than the content.


   DISCUSSION
TOP
 Abstract
 Introduction
 CONTEXT AND RESEARCH METHODS
 RESULTS
 DISCUSSION
REFERENCES
 
The study reported here was the second phase of an action learning project based around three research questions.

Question 1. Does Explicit Teaching Improve the Ability of Students to Write Effectively to a Lay Audience?
In this study, explicit teaching included three elements: instructing physiology and pharmacology students as to how to write Op-Eds, analyzing examples of Op-Eds written by professionals, and discussing the assessment rubric with students to make the grading process transparent. Prior to the explicit teaching, most students were already able to write effectively to lay audiences, reflected by the high grades for their communication assignment [mean (SD) = 74.7% (11.9%), n = 218]. This result was similar to the grades for the Op-Eds [mean (SD) = 74.0% (1.6%), n = 232] recorded in the first phase of the study, in which there was no pretest measure (14). It is worth noting that there was little evidence for the frequent claim from faculty members that "students can't write." In the present study, following explicit teaching, most students were able to write more effectively, with the results for the Op-Eds being significantly higher [mean (SD) = 84.4% (9.1%), n = 216]. Only some of the already very capable writers did not improve. This improvement in writing was associated with the explicit teaching intervention. It might be argued that this reflects the "practice effect" of writing (assessed by the same criteria). On that basis, it would be expected that most students would improve their results. However, while the communication and Op-Ed assignments share the same general communication purpose, they had distinctly different genre requirements. Most notably, the communication assignment had a relatively unstructured format based around guide questions, whereas the Op-Ed addressed these same issues using a structured format of brief paragraphs and a more focused and refined rhetorical purpose. The students were not told that they were to write an Op-Ed before the explicit teaching, so they could not practice writing Op-Eds. In addition, the improvement in students' writing was supported by a decrease in text complexity following explicit teaching (Table 7). The global FRE index as well as all recorded metrics of text complexity indicated that the Op-Eds were more appropriate than the communication assignment for lay readers. Similar to the first phase of this study (14), most students were able to reproduce the text characteristics of professionally written Op-Eds. Students reported that the examples of Op-Eds written by professional journalists greatly assisted their writing. In the present study, examples were used in combination with the assessment rubric and thus served to make the abstract criteria more concrete and practical.

Question 2. What Do Students Think About Learning to Write to Lay Audiences?
Responses from students to completing the Op-Ed were largely positive. Learning to communicate more effectively to lay audiences was considered useful and relevant to their careers as was the specific task of writing an Op-Ed. These data support the proposition that students who are provided with evidence for the role of professional writing are less opposed to learning writing skills (21).

Most students reported that writing the Op-Ed helped them realize the difficulty in writing to lay audiences and that writing the communication and Op-Ed assignments was challenging. However, there were differences in the posttask opinions of students from the 2004 (first) phase and the 2005 (second) phase. The report of "difficulty" was 87% versus 71% and of "challenge" was 80% versus 55% for the 2004 and 2005 cohorts, respectively. Again, this reduction in perceived difficulty and challenge was associated with the introduction of explicit teaching, which strongly supported the development of relevant writing skills and aimed at reducing the perceived difficulty in writing. Many students reported (before grades were returned) that their writing had improved, further supporting the efficacy of explicit teaching.

Question 3. Can Members of the Lay Public Recognize Differences in the Quality of Students' Writing Before and After Explicit Teaching?
Assessment tasks in science are more useful if they are authentic (2). In this study, the audience for the assignments was a small sample of the public who were not experts in physiology or pharmacology. It was not practical to distribute all student assignments because of the large class size. However, the opinions of the lay public regarding the writing of one student were surveyed. The sample communication and Op-Ed assignments from this student were selected because faculty members had determined a large improvement in the student's writing and wanted to know if the intended audience agreed. We predicted that the lay public would agree because the academic criteria were designed to reflect the relevant genre requirements. This prediction was borne out. Most respondents reported that the Op-Ed was favored over the communication assignment because it was easier to read and understand and used more simple language and text structure. The latter claim was supported by FRE and text metrics. That many respondents reported the communication assignment was more important and useful reflected their interest in the subject matter and not the structure of the text or more general features of writing. Readers' interests, prior knowledge, and needs are equally important variables in comprehension (19) and, furthermore, play an important role in influencing the development of scientific literacy (16).

This sample was broadly representative of the state population for age distribution, high school completion rate, and qualifications. However, compared with the 2001 state census figures, the sample vastly overrepresented females and levels of formal education. Detailed statistical design was beyond the scope of this small-scale study. Nevertheless, survey respondents were correctly categorized as "lay," i.e., nonexpert in physiology or pharmacology (3).

Future Directions
The need for science professionals to more effectively communicate their expertise to the lay public is widely recognized, but how this goal might be achieved is a significant problem in undergraduate degree programs. The media role model was developed to describe how students can learn to more effectively communicate science to lay audiences (14). In this second phase of research, the model has proven useful to frame how faculty members can use explicit teaching as part of this professional developmental process.

It is important that students are able to develop a commitment to improving communication of science to the lay public and take this into their workplace. Sustaining this commitment is challenging (22). However, we contend that universities must play an important role in instilling this ethos in students by encouraging them to directly engage with the lay public around their emerging understandings of science. This will be explored in the next phase of this action learning study.


   Acknowledgments
 
We thank Dr. John Harrison (School of Journalism, The University of Queensland) for the sustained support of this project and Assoc. Prof. Lesley Lluka for the useful feedback on this manuscript.

Received for publication November 7, 2006. Accepted for publication February 26, 2007.


   REFERENCES
TOP
 Abstract
 Introduction
 CONTEXT AND RESEARCH METHODS
 RESULTS
 DISCUSSION
 REFERENCES
 

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  13. Pechenik JA. A Short Guide to Writing About Biology (5th ed.). New York: Pearson Longman, 2004.
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