BIOL 300 Laboratory – Paper Puzzles
Spring 2006
Paper Puzzles are team exercises in reading the primary literature. The idea behind this exercise is to get undergraduate students more engaged in the concepts and details of academic research. Research is essentially the production and dissemination of new knowledge. One key feature that separates science from other disciplines is peer review. Before “new knowledge” is published, peer scientists examine the work and review it for merit. Peers are a cross section of individuals that are known by the editors of a scholarly journal to be familiar with the field. They review all sections of the paper. They review the introduction to make sure the authors are aware of other research on the topic. They review the methods to make sure that the authors used procedures appropriate to the questions being asked. They review the results to make sure that the data were appropriately examined and analyzed. Finally, peers review the discussion to see if the authors appropriately interpreted their results. Data are data, but data can be interpreted in different ways by scientists coming from different perspectives. Peer review ensures that data creation and interpretation are considered acceptable by a broad cross-section of scientists from within the discipline.
I will divide you into 5 teams, and each team will locate and prepare for discussion about a paper from the primary literature that is relevant to our most recent area of study. The papers must be research (not review) papers from refereed scholarly journals, and they must be recent (past 10 years) or classic (cited often for many years in other papers – use Web of Science on the library website to check). You will need to clear the paper with me in advance. Each lead team must have a clean copy of their paper (including all tables and figures) to me by the Wednesday before their scheduled discussion. I will make copies of the paper for the entire class, to be distributed on the Friday before the scheduled discussion.
As noted above, research papers can be divided into 4 major sections – introduction, methods, results and discussion. Everyone on a team will read the entire paper, but each team member will take responsibility for intensive study of one section. That team member will write a short summary and evaluation of their section of the paper (1-2 pages, typed, double-spaced). This summary will be due at the beginning of lab on the day of the discussion.
Everyone in the class will read the entire paper, but one person from the other teams will also intensively discuss one section of the paper. This person will be determined by me at each Paper Puzzle exercise.
During our Paper Puzzle discussions, the lead team will split to lead 4 group discussion sessions, one for each section of the paper. Each discussion group will thus include one person from the lead team, and one person from every other team. After 30 minutes of intense discussion about the assigned section of the paper, teams will reassemble and engage in a further 30 minutes of discussion about the entire paper. At the conclusion of that discussion, one member from each team will present their team’s interpretation of the paper and we will engage in further class-wide discussion of the value and relevance of the paper.
Every one in the class will then write a short summary and evaluation of the entire paper (1-2 pages, typed, double-spaced). This summary will be due on the Friday after our Wednesday Paper Puzzle discussion.
Your grade will be determined by your one section summary (20%), your five entire paper summaries (50%) and your participation in the group discussions (30%). Your summaries will be graded based on the following criteria: