Biochemistry Idea Papers: Teaching Proposal Writing

A writing‐intensive, methods‐based laboratory course for undergraduates

“…The proposals are unique, and the product of individual effort. Furthermore, this exercise is fundamentally different from a semesterlong proposal assignment in which the students must propose an original research idea without taking into account the limitation of research facilities, funding, and time [22]. Having to craft a proposal that is significantly original and experimentally tractable in 6 weeks requires that students engage with the primary literature as scientists.…”

“…However, despite the emphasis, the scientific community has placed on the relationship between scientific reading and writing, the graduate school transition from textbook-based instruction to primary literature-based learning is often navigated with difficulty [19,20]. Instructors of biochemistry report using writing to help students understand scientific literature as part of seminar and laboratory courses [7,16,21,22], and as a way of assessing stu-dent learning in group and laboratory projects [23]. Through the development of a rigorous seminar course for first-year graduate students, Carey and Colicelli used the presentation and analysis of scientific journal articles along with student research to teach effective scientific communication, experimental design skills, and promote critical thinking, ultimately preparing students for graduate level research.…”

Using ChatGPT for Method Development and Green Chemistry Education in Upper-Level Laboratory Courses

“…One “Marker of Excellence” is that “laboratory experiences are developed in such a way that students regularly use the iterative design process to advance scientific inquiry”. Some chemistry students gain experience designing experiments through experimental and/or research proposal assignments, and many examples of such assignments have been described in the literature. − Proposal assignments vary greatly in scope and level of curriculum. In some examples, introductory-level students write experimental proposals as part of a guided inquiry or problem-based project. , In others, students propose to perform a published experiment , or make small modifications to a published procedure to improve the yield or make a similar product. , Other more advanced proposal assignments are the product of an entire academic term’s worth of upper-division course work and are written about original research projects after students gain a strong grounding in primary literature. ,,, Several proposal writing projects described in the literature directly include instruction in research skills, like reading the chemical literature and using resources like SciFinder. − Some also incorporate professional skills like peer review. − , …”

An Exercise To Coach Students on Literature Searching

“…Some departments have chosen to implement full courses on this topic, − while others choose to develop literature skills through a variety of exercises that are relevant to specific contexts. The latter approach involves incorporation into other courses by devoting lectures to the topic, requiring the use of chemical information resources for projects, or merging chemical information principles into laboratory modules. − According to the survey responses, chemical information is most likely to be incorporated into organic chemistry, inorganic chemistry, or undergraduate chemistry seminar courses; this appears to correlate with the type of exercises found in the chemical education literature. This approach is often a natural fit since students must be savvy about searching the literature to find reference spectra, physical data, reaction procedures, or background information for a research project.…”

“…These individual assignments include the use of keyword and structure searching in Scifinder as well as other databases (Supporting Information). None of these assignments are particularly novel as many excellent examples of introducing basic literature skills already were published. − ,− …”