Collaboration Is Key: Using Interdisciplinary Assessment to Improve Wildlife Management Practices, Public Engagement in Science, and Science Communication Programs in Rhode Island
Year: 2022
Type: dissertation
Abstract: Over the past few decades, prestigious scientific institutions such as The National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Academy of Sciences have acknowledged the utmost importance of science communication to help improve the general public’s understanding of scientific knowledge. NSF has gone so far as to make “dissemination of research findings to increase scientific literacy” the third most recommended category for research funding priorities, second only to teaching and training, and broadening participation of underrepresented groups (NSB 2011, Skrip 2015). These efforts attest to a growing interest and investment in improving the field of science communication (Druschke and McGreavy 2016); however, there is still little research dedicated to actually assessing the effectiveness of science communication projects. My PhD project aimed to address this knowledge gap by combining ecological research, rhetoric and writing research, and social science research in order to develop and assess novel ways to improve the field of science communication. My dissertation contains four chapters: Chapter 1 is a learning outcomes assessment of the National Science Foundation-funded science communication project SciWrite@URI; Chapter 2 is an assessment of the written projects of SciWrite@URI participants; Chapter 3 uses a citizen science approach to estimate the distribution of American Woodcock in the state of Rhode Island; and Chapter 4 assesses the impact this citizen science project had on the volunteers. Chapters 1 and 2 focus on SciWrite@URI — an interdisciplinary model for science graduate students designed around three learning outcomes based on tenets from scholarship in writing and rhetoric — habitual writing, multiple genres, and frequent review. SciWrite students completed courses and a science communication internship, attended writing workshops, and became tutors at a newly established Graduate Writing Center. After two years of training, students improved as writers by more frequently writing multiple drafts and engaging in peer review, increased their confidence as writers, and decreased their apprehension about writing. In addition, we created an interdisciplinary rubric based on these tenets to evaluate a variety of writing products across genres. We used this rubric to assess three different genres written by 12 SciWrite-trained graduate science students and 74 non-SciWrite-trained graduate science students at the same institution. We found that written work from SciWrite students scored higher than those from non-SciWrite students in all three genres, and most notably thesis/dissertation proposals were higher quality. The rubric results also suggest that the variation in writing quality was best explained by the ability of
Author: Erin Harrington
Language: English
Subfield: Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law
Field: Environmental Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: gold
OpenAlex ID: W4323656161