Teaching a Reading Method for Scientific Research Articles: Transforming an Exercise from In-Person to Virtual Instruction in Volume 1 of Teaching Critical Reading Skillss: Strategies for Academic Librarians
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Date
2023
Authors
Bogucka, Roxanne
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Publisher
ACRL
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Description
For students whose previous education has relied solely on reading textbooks, first
encounters with scholarly literature can be chastening experiences. Few studies explore
how students approach primary literature; fewer still focus on STEM reading. Scientific
research articles, which may provide minimal background and make assumptions about
readers’ level of expertise and domain knowledge, can be daunting indeed and pose a
barrier to understanding, learning, and application, particularly for students whose previous educational exposures haven’t prepared them for “cracking the code” of scientific
communication. The converse problem of students overestimating their abilities to grasp
such articles also occurs. Fortunately, these articles share a boilerplate anatomy, which
instructors can commend to neophyte consumers of scientific research as a useful key to
unlocking their contents. In this chapter, I describe an exercise that leverages the widely used IMRaD structure of scientific research articles in order to help students understand article contents
as well as my process in moving this exercise online. This reading method also provides
students practice in assessing abstracts to determine whether or not to proceed to the
full text, a skill that will serve them well when they no longer have access to articles via
subscription-rich university libraries and have to decide whether to spend their own or
their employer’s money to get the full text.