Briefs · Frontier Science
From jargon to impact: Teaching undergraduates the art of public communication
Academics write for journals. Almost nobody reads them. Three geographers have a better idea.
Seth T. Kannarr, Derek H. Alderman and Katrina Stack have written 26 articles for The Conversation since 2017. In a new paper in The Professional Geographer, they argue that such short, open-access articles belong in the classroom too — as tools for public storytelling and authentic learning, short, sharp and shareable.
Their assignment is simple and terrifying. Students pick a pressing issue, pitch it, and write a short article in The Conversation’s style, revising until the claims hold up and the jargon is gone. The process is difficult and humbling. The result is a piece students can publish or put in a portfolio.
The authors write for four reasons: the challenge of plain language, the thrill of 70,000 reads, the ease of sharing without a paywall, and the usefulness of their own articles as seminar reading.
Conclusion: scholarship is not a seminar, but rather a conversation — and undergraduates, it turns out, can join it.
Read the original at The Conversation (Science and Technology)
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