Meeting Abstract
Scientists often have to share their work with people who are not experts in the same field, including students, the media, and politicians. However, the communication training offered at many undergraduate and graduate programs tends to focus only on how to talk to and write for other scientists. As a result, many scientists over-use complicated words with field-specific meanings (“jargon”), making understanding difficult. This bad habit can begin early in scientists’ careers and become set over time.To improve how undergraduate students communicate their research, we asked how being required to write without jargon improved students’ writing for non-experts. We asked students in a scientific communication course (n=16) to write a 250-500 word popular science article on a topic they were already researching for a semester-long project. We then challenged them to rewrite their first draft using only the 1000 most common English words, as inspired by the webcomic XKCD. Then, they wrote a final version with no restrictions. We used a rubric and the “DeJargonizer” online tool to ask how this improved the amount of jargon used, and the content and quality of the final article. Even with limited in-class practice, most students wrote competent articles for non-experts and successfully explained their topic without jargon when required. However, most students did not incorporate the phrasing and explanations from their jargon-free assignment into the final article, choosing instead to only edit their original draft. Despite this, several students said that they enjoyed the activity and felt that it helped them talk about their research in presentations. With modifications such as peer-feedback, this activity could be a fun way to improve science communications.
