Course reflection
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Through the different presentations and written assignments, I was able to learn the importance of story telling in scientific communication. More specifically, I was able to distinguish differences in communicating science to an audience with a scientific topics background, compared to a lay audience. I was able to learn about topics I did not have previous knowledge about such as open science, predatory journals, writing grants and the peer review process. Through the feedback from each assignment, I was able to critically reflect on aspects of my professional communication that needed improvement.
Assignments
Microteaching
Interdisciplinary Skills Acquired: Communication
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This was an oral presentation in which I had to incorporate story telling to teach the class about a topic of our choice in five minutes. For my topic, I chose a Bengali street food called pani puri. The majority of the class had not heard about this dish before. In order to give the class a visual demonstration, I brought homemade pani puri and went through the steps of how to eat it properly. I incorporated story telling by giving the geographical background of the ingredients used, providing personal context and suggesting places to eat pani puri in Toronto.
Debate
Interdisciplinary Skills Acquired: Communication
and evidence based decision making
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I had to prepare notes before our debate on the general topic, Open Science. The specific topic was “All publicly funded research should be published in open access journals." We had to be prepared to argue for both sides.
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