Developing scientific writing and integrating feedback for undergraduate biomedical students through mimicking the professional journal article review process

Abstract

It is critical for students to develop clear, logical and persuasive writing skills during their time as undergraduates. However, it is often the case that biomedical sciences students have little opportunity to develop their writing skills and receive feedback prior to their final year research project theses. To address this need, here we present our development of a semester-long group writing project which mimicked the professional journal article writing, submission and review process as the major continuous assessment project within a semester-long penultimate year proteomics course. In groups of three, students select a topic of interest then write a review using typical review journal guidelines. The teacher acts as editor then student peers act as blind reviewers of peer submissions. The students then revise manuscript according to editor and reviewer feedback for final submission and assessment. Thereby, the project incorporates group work, interaction with research literature, peer and teacher feedback together with formative and summative assessment. Furthermore, students gain a clear understanding of the scientific authoring and publishing process. A trial run of this assessment was run in early 2015 at the University of Hong Kong. Student comments are assessed quantitatively and qualitatively to measure the effectiveness of this approach to improve student writing.