ANNE MORRIS HOOKE

INTRODUCTION FOR FACULTY TO THIS LONG WRITING ASSIGNMENT

[Letter to colleagues]

I have been absent from the office this week attending the Center for Writing Excellence/CELT Workshop on Improving Student Writing in Content Courses. I have learned a lot!  My motive for attending was to get some formal instruction in how to teach our students to write, and especially how to teach them without requiring more than 24 hours in my day for correcting and grading. 

One of the tasks for the workshop was to design a long writing assignment that we would use in a course next semester.  As I am scheduled to teach Communicating Science next semester, I chose the Grant Proposal Assignment I have in that course.  In contrast to the three lines I give the students for this assignment in the course information (insert from my syllabus), albeit supplemented with a whole “lecture” with handouts on how to write a grant proposal), my assignment is now described in two pages.  Whatever happened to my credo, “Less is More”? 

The purpose of the assignment is now clearly spelled out (see “Assignment Objective”) and aligned with the “Course Objective” (also reprinted on the assignment sheet).  Of course, I always told the students why they were doing the assignment, but now they can read why every time they check the assignment sheet for other instructions. 

A grading rubric is now included with the assignment (in the past, “10 points” was all the information they received on the grade value); the rubric will not only help me in grading the assignment, it will also indicate clearly to the student how “important” each section is.

Finally, as an “epilogue” to the assignment (always included before as a mandatory reflective journal entry without specific instructions), I ask the students to consider how proposal writing connects to other parts of the scientific enterprise – beyond the obvious value of the exercise for organizing one’s thoughts and developing the design of experiments.

I will be happy to share any or all the materials from the workshop with you.

AMH

ANNE MORRIS HOOKE

LONG WRITING ASSIGNMENT FOR STUDENTS

COMMUNICATING SCIENCE:

PAPERS, PROPOSALS AND PRESENTATIONS

MBI 615

COURSE OBJECTIVES

My aim in this course is to introduce students to the principles of effective communication in microbiology and to help them practice the various forms of communication required by the scientific enterprise.  At the end of the semester the student should have a good grasp of the purpose and practice of different forms of communication in science.

ASSIGNMENT OBJECTIVES

Scientists need money to do science, and a major source of money is the Federal Government.  The Government, does not, however, hand out money to every supplicant.  In one sense, grant money is a prize for winning a competition, and there are many rules that guide the conduct of this competition.  In another sense, the process of writing a grant proposal is a valuable exercise in gathering and ordering one’s thoughts, developing hypotheses, and designing experiments to test the hypotheses.  Although the primary aim of this exercise is to introduce you to the rules, I do want you to think about the science as well.

Grant Proposal (10 points, 10% of the total grade)

The students will prepare grant proposals using the forms and format required by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) AREA Program or the National Science Foundation (NSF), as appropriate.  Download the forms and formal directions (as well as helpful tips) from http://grants1.nih.gov/grants/forms.htm and http://www.nsf.gov/pubsys/ods/getpub.cfm?gpg respectively.  The proposed research will be based on the student’s current dissertation research; first-year students may use a current lab class exercise or research done as an undergraduate. 

While the science is always the most important part of a grant proposal, it is imperative that the instructions for the preparation of the proposal be followed to the letter.  NIH and NSF staff members are instructed to return proposals that do not meet these requirements.  For a real-world proposal, you must stay within the specified page margins, the font must not be smaller than 12 cpi and the text must not exceed 15 single-spaced pages; the Literature Cited section is not included in the 15-page limit.  For this exercise, I will grant (no pun intended) one exception, as I do not expect you will exceed the page limit for Methods of Procedure: please use double spacing.

Due: October 12

We are far enough along in the course that you should be able to turn in a polished product without going through the first-draft/revision process.  If, however, you should have any questions please do not hesitate to ask! 

Grading Scheme for Grant Proposal Assignment

Although reviewers for NIH and NSF proposals use somewhat different rubrics or schemes for “grading” grants (as you will see in your next assignment), my purpose here is to make sure you understand the rules of the game, and also that you can describe your proposed research clearly and concisely.  I will, therefore, use the following scheme for grading this assignment.

AMH REFLECTION ON THIS ASSIGNMENT

This has certainly made me think a lot more about how I have asked for this assignment in the past and how I have spent a lot of time answering questions from the students.  I hope most of this more elaborate design will take care of many of the questions and also give the students much better guidance for and understanding of the exercise.  I am looking forward to testing it next semester.  Thank you all for all the instruction, insights and calories!