Resources for Teaching and Learning Science Writing Skills at UBC

A multi-year collaboration between the Faculty of Science and the UBC Writing Centre has led to a collection of diverse science-specific writing resources for our students. The Writing Centre hired science-specific tutors, created a detailed science writing reference document, and gathers information about students who visit. For the classroom, we have developed a series of science-specific writing activities. We will share examples of the pre-, in-, and post-class exercises together with scoring keys and/or rubrics for each activity. We have also produced science writing videos featuring the character Grammar Squirrel (http://bit.ly/17Y09Yg). We will share a sample video and outline the process used to produce the videos. We collect student feedback on the resources by including a short survey with each activity and video. We have also developed a detailed rubric for assessing student work both before and after the implementation of these new resources. During this session, we also invite your ideas on student and faculty needs in terms of developing further resources and using them for teaching and learning science writing skills.