by Andrew Wiggins

“Storytelling is the most powerful way to put ideas into the world today.”

—Robert McKee

As a PhD candidate, I am routinely evolving and improving the narrative telling the story of my research. I have learned that doing science is only half of the process for a scientist. The second involves communicating what was done, which is an age-old problem I struggle with. I often become frustrated and ask myself, “How do I transform what I’ve learned and discovered in a way that others can easily connect with and understand?” If I communicate too little in a non-narrative form, then it will be boring and lack detail. If there is too much information, then it will be overly confusing and take away from the story. So, being introduced to Randy Olson’s And-But-Therefore (ABT) template in Houston, We have a Narrative has empowered me with my science narrative. This scaffolding is applicable in almost any situation and form, which has caused me to reflect on improving my student’s ability to write and answer questions alongside teaching them the core concepts for any course I teach.

My eureka moment for improving student writing manifested during a semester when I was taking the last course to complete my requirement for the interdisciplinary certificate in university teaching (my first course in writing-in-the-disciplines pedagogy), writing my first, first-author paper about my own research, and acting as the grader for the non-major microbiology and healthcare course. In a nutshell, it seem to be the perfect writing storm, which forced me to reflect on the importance of my own science narrative, why it’s important for me to teach my students to write in the discipline, and how to improve their ability to effectively communicate their understanding in the material.

Providing students with the scaffolding to convey their understanding is the greatest tool I can teach them.

Most people would agree that writing is a skill that improves over time with practice, so providing students with the scaffolding to convey their understanding is the greatest tool I can teach them. If that tool can be carried over into other disciplines, then its value to their learning experience increases exponentially. This notion and application of the notion is now a core concept in my own teaching philosophy.

So, what’s the problem with student writing and their lack of a narrative? I often noticed that the difference between receiving full credit or half credit was a student’s ability to clearly connect pros and cons in a structure that conveys their understanding of the question(s)—not the material! These pre-healthcare students could easily memorize information and core concepts to make a list of facts to answer the question. They could even write coherent sentences, but most often their list of single-sentence facts did not convey an understanding of what was being asked or how to apply it to a given scenario.

Being pre-healthcare professionals, their ability to communicate complex concepts and idea with their patients in a form that they can understand is critical to the well-being of their clients. Therefore, it makes sense for me to spend class time and design assignments to lay a foundation to teach them a writing style that does so. These students have a story; they just often don’t know how to tell it.