This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Articles published in The Conversation go well beyond academics writing for a general audience—they can also serve as valuable content for educators to use in the classroom. Our recent article in the academic journal The Professional Geographer explores how articles from The Conversation provide opportunities for public storytelling and authentic learning in university classrooms.
As geographers and experienced writers for The Conversation—having written or co-written 26 articles since 2017—we understand firsthand the value of disseminating these short, open-access articles that can be easily republished under the Creative Commons license. One of the top republishers for The Conversation is Actively Learn, a McGraw Hill platform used to provide standards-aligned content for K–12 educators. Yet we feel that The Conversation's potential contributions to university education have not been sufficiently explored, which is unexpected given that its articles are authored by college teachers and researchers.
Public storytelling is increasingly important for scholars as higher education faces increased scrutiny, politicized attacks on truth-telling, pressure to show broader relevance and calls to regain trust. In our article, we argue for integrating more public-facing science communication into educational spaces. We also introduce our use of articles from The Conversation as a classroom tool and discuss coaching students through challenges they face.
Our pedagogical work may interest university educators in other fields looking for ways to engage their classrooms in "authentic learning"—that is, learning in real-world contexts—and incorporate public storytelling into the professional preparation of their students. Authentic learning gives students opportunities to observe how subject experts apply academic research to address social, political and environmental issues and contribute to public and policy debates and decisions beyond the classroom. We choose to use articles from The Conversation in pedagogical exercises because we want to challenge students to confront societal issues from new perspectives.
The goal is to do our part as university educators to help produce scholar-citizens ready for civic engagement. For example, in an end-of-semester writing assignment we have used, students were tasked with selecting a pressing issue within the course's scope and writing a short article in the style of The Conversation. Students were asked to draft a "pitch" for an article before writing it, just like prospective authors do for The Conversation.
They were asked to make revisions, think through how to support their claims with evidence and adapt to the various conventions of writing for the public, much as they would when working with the editorial team. Although it is a sometimes difficult and often humbling process for students, they come to understand in real time the struggle of writing concisely and engagingly for a general audience. They also produce a well-written short article that they can be proud of and potentially publish in an appropriate outlet or include in a portfolio for a potential employer.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
