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Science for Citizens

 

Enhance scientific literacy by making science both interesting and relevant to students.

This course, developed by faculty at AASCU member institution Sam Houston State University (TX), demonstrates that scientific literacy can best be achieved by offering an alternative type of integrated science course to the traditional “memorize the facts” approach of science education.

The Science for Citizens course introduces students to the process of science through an approach that includes deliberative dialogue about science issues in the news and provides students with the ability to understand empirical and evidence-based research without having to relinquish their core beliefs or religion.

 

Requirements for success.

• An interdisciplinary approach
• Professional development time for faculty to embrace a “flipped classroom” approach, where class time centers on active-learning strategies, case studies, basics of argumentation, and logical fallacies
• Time for faculty to incorporate both the knowledge and the process of science with experiential learning.

program development

This program was created as part of AASCU’s National Blended Course Consortium (NBCC), which aimed to address three pressing issues in higher education—cost, access, and quality—through the development and dissemination of technology-enhanced, interdisciplinary courses for first-year undergraduates.

NBCC courses were:

• Developed collaboratively by teams of faculty
• Focused on complex, real-world civic issues
• Delivered in a blended format (in-person and online)
• Designed to be scalable, flexible, and self-sustaining

Each of the NBCC courses has a distinct set of learning objectives, while also sharing a common focus on developing students’ civic engagement, critical thinking and communication skills. For more information about this initiative and to preview some of our interactive online modules, please visit this website.

 

 https://aascu.org/resources/science-for-citizens/

 

Dark Citizen Science

 

Citizen science is often celebrated. We interrogate this position through exploration of socio-technoscientific phenomena that mirror citizen science yet are dis-aligned with its ideals. We term this ‘Dark Citizen Science’. We identify five conceptual dimensions of citizen science – purpose, process, perceptibility, power and public effect. Dark citizen science mirrors traditional citizen science in purpose and process but diverges in perceptibility, power and public effect. We compare two Internet-based categorization processes, Citizen Science project Galaxy Zoo and Dark Citizen Science project Google’s reCAPTCHA. We highlight that the reader has, likely unknowingly, provided unpaid techno-scientific labor to Google. We apply insights from our analysis of dark citizen science to traditional citizen science. Linking citizen science as practice and normative democratic ideal ignores how some science-citizen configurations actively pit practice against ideal. Further, failure to fully consider the implications of citizen science for science and society allows exploitative elements of citizen science to evade the sociological gaze.

 

Riley, J., & Mason-Wilkes, W. (2023). Dark citizen science. Public Understanding of Science. https://doi.org/10.1177/09636625231203470

Rules for Bullet Lists:

From: Daily Writing Tips  https://www.dailywritingtips.com

Before reading this post you might wanna check one we published a while ago titled 7 Rules For Formatting Lists. Here's a quotation from it:

"The items in unnumbered lists are often preceded by dots or other symbols known collectively as bullets, though such markers are technically not necessary, especially in a recipe or a materials list. (In those cases, it’s implicit that the ingredients or components are added or constructed in the order listed — it’s actually a numbered list that needs no numbers.)"

A bullet list lets you

• display a set of terms, phrases, or statements clearly.
• prevent reader fatigue or confusion in the form of a long run-in list in a sentence.
• avoid repetition by following an introductory phrase with “fill-in-the-blank” list items.

Keep these guidelines for constructing bullet lists in mind:

• If each of the items in a bullet list completes a sentence begun with an introductory phrase, the first letter of the first word of each item should be lowercase, and the last word should be followed by terminal punctuation (a period, question mark, or exclamation point), as in the preceding bullet list.
• The format in the previous list, however, is not recommended for items consisting of less than a few words, unless listing multiple items as a run-in list in a sentence would produce a ponderously long sentence.
• If all list items are complete sentences, they should follow an introductory statement ending with a colon, as in this bullet list.
• If all list items are incomplete sentences, they can follow an open introductory phrase or one ending with a colon; in the latter case, the first letter of the first word in each item should be uppercase.
• The first letter of the first word of each complete sentence should be uppercase, and complete sentences should include terminal punctuation.
• All items in a list should have the same format -- a word a phrase, or a complete sentence -- and should follow the same grammatical structure.
• If every item in a list begins with the same word or phrase, try to incorporate the word or phrase into the introductory phrase or statement, then delete it from the list items.
• Avoid creating a bullet list in which one or more items consist of very long sentence or more than one sentence; if this is the case, it’s better to use traditional sentence form.

A bullet list with a closed introductory phrase and whose items are single words should be formatted as follows:

• apples
• bananas
• cherries

Likewise, a bullet list with a closed introductory phrase and whose items are short phrases should be formatted as follows:

• personal identification number
• automated teller machine
• liquid-crystal display

The following elements are superfluous in a bullet list with an introductory phrase ending in a colon:

• A comma after each item
• A semicolon after each item
• The word and or or following a comma or semicolon in the penultimate item
• A period following the last item

A bullet list preceded by an open-ended introductory phrase may but need not include

• a semicolon (not a comma) after each item;
• the word and or or following the semicolon in the penultimate item (optional); and
• a period following the last item.

Speaking Tips for Writers

1. Make your introduction brief. Less than 30 seconds. If someone introduces you, skip the introduction completely, because you were just introduced. There's nothing that stalls a presentation or performance more than a two or three minute monologue before getting into the "meat" of things.
2. Use the podium. If there is a podium or table, use it to hold your materials. Sometimes we shake when we read (even if we're not nervous, though especially if we are), and we shake more if we become conscious of our own shaking.
3. Use the microphone. If there's a mic, use it. Sure your voice might carry without one, or you may have to fiddle with it a moment to adjust for your height, but people in the back can hear better when your voice is amplified. Trust me on this.
4. Encourage audience interaction. When performing poetry, this means you can allow an audience to clap if they choose to clap. When giving a presentation, let the audience know whether it's appropriate to ask questions as you present or if you'll have a Q&A after the presentation is complete. Then, make sure there is a Q&A.
5. Act confident. You might be terrified, but try not to let it show on the outside. To accomplish this, stand tall. Speak with conviction. Make eye contact. Most importantly, don't apologize. While you may know when you're making mistakes in front of an audience, many of them are probably unaware.
6. Be organized. If you're giving a presentation, have talking points ready to go before the presentation. If you're reading poems (or from a fiction/nonfiction book), have your selections planned out before you hit the stage. It's uncomfortable and frustrating for the audience, if you have to page through a book to find the right passage to read. Organization goes a long way in how the audience perceives you and how you perceive yourself.
7. Slow down. This is an important tip, because many people automatically start talking fast, especially if they're nervous or they know they're on the clock. I try to remember to breathe and pause in appropriate places. Nothing awkward, just long enough to allow my audience to digest what I just said.You may use a slightly longer pause to help make the point, but don't overdo it.
8. Make personal, add humor. Sometimes your jokes will not be personal. Be careful with humor. Sometimes your personal stories will not be humorous. Sometimes the stars will align and both will coincide, and that's when you'll engage your audience the most. While I advise humor and personal anecdotes, make sure they have context in your presentation.
9. Stop before you're asked to leave. There's something to the thought of leaving the audience wanting more. Know your time. Wear a watch. And end a little early (like a minute or two). If the audience feels like the presentation or performance went by fast, they'll attribute it to your great speaking skills.
10. Provide next steps and/or a conclusion. Depending on why you're speaking, you should have some kind of suggestion for your audience. Maybe it's to buy your book or applaud the hosts. Maybe it's to put some of your advice into action immediately. If you're presenting a topic, it's a good idea to sum up all the main points before sending your audience back out into the world.

One bonus tip: Provide handouts. Whether you're reading poetry or leading a workshop on business management, handouts are a great way to let your audience have something tangible to take away with them. Your handouts should be helpful and relevant. They should also include your name and contact information, including your website or blog url. (Yes, it's a sneaky good marketing tool.)

Just remember, speaking is an activity. Most activities are hard to master unless you practice. So get out there and speak and realize that you're going to make mistakes early on. That's part of the learning process. Just dust yourself off and get out there again.

Writing Nonfiction

Eight preparatory steps necessary to successfully write a nonfiction book.

1. Choose your topic.

The first thing you want to do as you prepare to write a nonfiction book is choose a topic for your project carefully. This may seem like a no-brainer, but it really isn’t.

2. Create a Content Plan

Create an outline or a table of contents for you book. This ends up looking like a table of contents—actually a rather detailed table of contents with chapter titles and subheading titles. You might prefer to just create a simple outline or a bulleted list.

Whatever your method of choice, create something that looks like the structure of a book—a table of contents. And know what content will fill that structure as you create your manuscript. That’s your map.

Then, when you sit down to write each day, you know exactly what to write. In fact, the more detailed you make this plan, the more quickly and easily you will write your book. You will spend little time staring at your computer screen wondering what to write or what comes next. You will know. It will be right there in your writing plan. You’ll just follow the map—your table of contents—to your destination.

3. Determine What Research You Need

You might think you can write your book “off the top of your head” because you are the expert on the topic. Inevitably, though, you will discover a need to search for something—a URL, a quote, the title of a book. These things can slow down your process. This is where preparation can help keep your fingers on the keyboard typing rather than perusing the Internet.

For each item in your plan—or your detailed table of contents, brainstorm the possible research you need and make note of it.

As you write, if you discover you need more research or interviews, don’t stop writing. Instead, create brackets in your manuscript that say [research here] and highlight them in yellow. Later, do a search for the term “research,” and fill in the gaps.

4. Create a To-Do List

Look over your content plan. Take all the research items you listed and put them on a to-do list.

Make a list of URLs, books and articles to find. Look for anything you need to do. For instance, does your research require that you visit a certain location? If so, put “Visit XX” on the to do list.

Don’t forget to put interviews on this list. You want to conduct your interviews now.

5. Gather and Organize Your Materials

Gather as much of your research and other necessary material as you can prior to the end of October. Purchase the books, copy the articles into Evernote.com, copy and past the URLs into a Word doc, or drag them into Scrivener’s research folder, for instance. Get your interviews transcribed as well—and read through them with a highlighter, marking the quotes you think you want to use.

If you are writing memoir, you might want to gather photos, journals and other memorabilia. If you are repurposing blog posts, or reusing any other previously published or written material, you want to put all of this in one place—an online folder, a Scrivener file or a Word file.

Generally, get as much of what you need to write your book in an easily accessible format and location so you aren’t searching for it when you should be writing. Use piles, boxes, hanging folders, computer folders, cloud storage…whatever works best for you.

6. Determine How Much Time You Need

Each nonfiction book is different and requires a different amount of time to write. A research based book takes longer to write, for example, because you have to study, evaluate and determine your opinion of the studies. You have to read the interviews you conducted, choose appropriate quotes and then work those quotes into your manuscript.

If, on the other hand, you write from your own experiences, this take less time. With the exception of drawing on anecdotes, an occasional quote or bit of information from a book, the material all comes from your head. You need only sit down and write about a process you created, your own life story or your area of expertise.

7. Create a Writing Schedule

Last, create a writing schedule. You now know how much time you need to write your book. Now find those hours in your calendar and block them off. Make those hours sacred.

8. Put a Back-Up System in Place.

Yes…this is my last tip, because you just never know what happens. Your computer crashes or dies. You accidentally delete your whole manuscript. Your child dumps milk all over your keyboard.

You want a back up of your project. Always save it to your computer’s drive and onto a thumb drive or, better yet, into the cloud, for safe keeping! Make these plans in advance as well. You can use Evernote.com, Dropbox.com or Google Drive, for example.