As an activity during my Geomicrobiology course in Fall 2019, students wrote acticles for the science communication website Sciworthy (https://www.sciworthy.com). Here is a pdf of the class assignment, and below are links to published articles from students in my class:
- https://www.sciworthy.com/antibiotic-resistance-is-natural-and-it-is-everywhere/
- https://www.sciworthy.com/mining-with-acid-generating-bacteria/
- https://www.sciworthy.com/dying-coral-reefs-are-springing-forward-with-new-life/
- https://www.sciworthy.com/a-special-kind-of-bacteria-lets-cement-fix-itself/
- https://www.sciworthy.com/twenty-two-years-in-the-breakdown/
- https://www.sciworthy.com/bacteria-from-the-black-sea-have-an-unusual-diet/
- https://www.sciworthy.com/microbe-lasagna-tells-us-about-what-life-was-like-billion-years-ago/
- https://www.sciworthy.com/dna-evidence-allowed-biologists-to-identify-a-new-type-of-bacteria/
This activity helped inspire Sciworthy’s Professor Parnership Program. Please contact Gina Misra if you’d like to use Sciworthy as a teaching tool in your classroom. You are welcome to use my assignment materials to adapt this activity for your course, and I encourage you to contact me at daniel.s.jones@nmt.edu if you’d like to discuss how this worked from the instructors perspective.
Below are results from an informal end-of-term survey that I administered to get feedback on the activity and hear whether students felt it helped with their final paper topics and comprehension of primary scientific literature. (Recieved 10/13 reponses. Results are shared with student's permission.)