“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.”
~ Albert Einstein
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Part of what is so exciting to me about science is the fact that at its core, science is just curiosity. Science is like the grown-up version of that kid who is always asking, “but why?” With science, we never have to lose that child-like curiosity. we can keep asking questions and learning new things, just because it is interesting.
In this section, I wanted to focus on some of the communication that I have done about science that I conducted purely because it was interesting to me. Scientists are naturally curious about the world around them. Being able to communicate their findings is an important and often overlooked, step in the scientific process. Writing articles and presenting at conferences or in classrooms is a valuable way to spark curiosity in others and share findings with other scientists in your field. In this section, you can read and look at three pieces of science communication on subjects that I studied just because they sounded interesting to me.
Scroll down to view each of the pieces in this section in the order that they were made, or click on one of the buttons below to jump directly to that piece.
Alternative feeding habits in sea hares part 1
While participating in the Bing Overseas Studies Program in Australia I conducted an independent research project on the feeding preferences of the Spotted Sea Hare (Aplysia dactylomela). At the end of the program, I submitted this scientific report on my project. Through this project and the writing of this report, I gained valuable experience with conducting marine research, as well as writing my results to be shared with a specialist audience.
I had written a scientific report before, so I was able to apply what I had learned from that paper while writing this report. At the beginning of writing this report I knew generally how it was going to go, but each time you write a scientific paper it is a whole new experience. I wrote the sections for this paper out of order. From my previous experience with writing a scientific report, I knew that the methods and results sections were going to be the easiest to write. For this paper, I started with those. I then went on to write the introduction and discussion sections. This process allowed me to digest the data that I collected and the process I went through first to find the story that I wanted to tell. One of my biggest takeaways from this report is to find the story in your data that will make your paper interesting to your readers. By writing the methods and results sections first I was able to fully reflect on what my data was saying before I started to write the introduction and discussion where I would support the story my data was telling with conclusions from past research.
This was the set-up of the feeding trials that I conducted for this project and one of the key figures in my paper.
In this process, I really learned how to think critically about the research I had conducted and how best to communicate my findings so that others could see the importance of the work and feel the interest that I have in the topic. Communication is about conveying to others what you already know; being able to do so in a professional manner requires an internal translation from thoughts to technical language. By finding the story in my data this initial translation was made a lot easier. This is a strategy that I continue to employ while I write for any audience, but particularly technical audiences. Going through results or the new information that I am sharing first so that I can come up with a framework for the story that I am telling helps to guide my writing process.
“Having a story to tell, no matter who the audience is helps to guide my thinking and writing.”
Through this report, I learned how to do this for a technical audience and this experience is something that I continue to think about as I write other technical texts. I am currently working on my honors thesis and I have to continuously stop and re-identify the story that I am telling to make sure what I am writing is actively contributing to the paper. It can be easy to get caught up in spouting off facts or using lots of technical jargon, but when you break it down, everything is just a story. Viewing technical writing through this framework is a helpful way to produce effective technical communication.
Alternative feeding habits in sea hares part 2
At the end of the Bing Overseas Studies Program in Australia, we all gathered for two days to listen to presentations from all of our classmates on the independent research projects that they had conducted. This was my chance to convey the technical information in my research paper to a more general audience. Most of my classmates had a sense of what I did for the project, but this was my opportunity to pull together all of the skills I had gained as a part of this project and show my classmates and professors what I had learned from my research.
This was the fall of my Junior year, so at this point, I had been accepted into the Notation in Science Communication, but I hadn’t yet taken any of the classes. As I was creating this presentation I was pulling together everything that I knew about general science communication from my interest and previous classes. I didn’t yet have the specific terminology or information that I have now.
“I realized early on in this project that images are key to an engaging presentation.”
Having some key information as bullet points on the slides is good, but it is the images that really grab people’s attention and keep them engaged with what I am saying. Using the multimedia capabilities of a slide show really helped to make this an engaging presentation.
Since this presentation, I have learned the value of using a variety of modes to communicate scientific information and I can definitely see that intuition starting with this presentation. Since giving this talk I have learned how to make slides a complementary component of a presentation and focus more on the visual elements in a slide deck. This ensures that what you are saying in the presentation is the information that listeners are focusing on. Looking back on this presentation I think it was pretty effective. I do have some text on most of the slides, but I tried to keep that short and most of the information is in what I was saying.
I think the key learning point from this particular piece is more along the lines of how to effectively translate technical information for a more general audience. This is something that I have gotten a lot of practice with since this presentation as a part of the NSC, but I would say this was a pretty good first try. I did have the advantage of knowing my specific audience (being my classmates and professors) and that they had a pretty good base of knowledge. That said, I made sure to think about the content in the simplest terms possible, and then add more specificity from there. This made sure that everything was very clear while still conveying the information accurately. I continue to think this way about public audience texts, especially when I am converting a technical piece I wrote into a work more geared towards a generalist audience. Simplifying and then re-specifying the information is an effective way to make sure the content is simple but all of the information is included.
The effects of environmental stressors and diet on sea hares
This is the graphical abstract that conveys the key concepts in the literature review to the reader in one easy to understand figure.
This literature review was written as a technical audience text for the Introduction to the Notation in Science Communication writing class. I took this in the winter quarter of my junior year, just after I got back from Australia and the sea hare research I conducted there. I wanted to continue to explore what we know about sea hares and was interested in studying them more for my honors thesis. This literature review allowed me to do a deep dive into what we currently know about sea hares and their response to environmental stressors, as well as to identify some gaps in the current literature. I then went on to write a children’s book to share this same information with kids and their families.
In writing this literature review I thought back to all that I had learned from writing previous technical scientific papers as well as what I had learned in the general writing course that I took in my freshman year at Stanford. In the process of writing this paper I thought about the story I was trying to tell as well as how to put the papers I was citing in conversion with each other.
“An important part of a literature review, and any review section of a technical paper, is putting past research in conversation with each other so that you can identify gaps where new research would be useful.”
One strategy that I used towards this end while writing this paper was to make a spreadsheet of all of the papers I was using in the review and what they said about different topics. This allowed me to easily see where certain papers agreed or disagreed, and where there were gaps in the literature. In using this strategy it was much easier to make sure my writing was compelling and followed along with the story I was telling, as opposed to being a list of past research.
In using more integrated rhetoric by having past research in conversation with each other, this literature review is more fluid and more effective at informing readers about the state of current research on the impacts of environmental stressors on sea hares. The information is easier to grasp and the gaps in the research are more obvious to the reader. By doing this I was able to write a more effective literature review. I still use this strategy today. As I was editing the introduction to my honors thesis, I went through and created a similar spreadsheet. It really helped me to see how all of the papers I had read work together and how I could turn that information into a cohesive piece of science communication.