Alternative Genre: Audience, Assessment, Awareness

The following paper documents the collaborative project, Alternative Genre: Audience, Assessment, Awareness, recently incorporated by Mark Hiller's Biology 327: Advanced Genetics and Katherine Cottle's Writing 181: Writing Studies classes during the Fall 2017 semester at Goucher College.

History: Spring 2017

The project was originally imagined at a spring 2017 semester CAST (Center for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching) workshop at Goucher College, led by Robin Cresiski, Director of CAST. The workshop paired professors of different disciplines for the purpose of reviewing, evaluating, and revising existing formal assignment sheets for clarity, depth, and recognizable goals within small-stakes and high-stakes semester frameworks. The pairing exercise proved successful and thought provoking for the majority of the participants, as the alternative perspective allowed for suggestions, views, and external recommendations that are typically unavailable within singular or closely related field settings. Katherine Cottle, assistant professor of writing in the Center for Contemporary and Creative Writing, was paired with Mark Hiller, director of the Center for Natural Sciences and associate professor of biology, for this exercise. During the exercise, Hiller and Cottle noted that two of their courses planned for the fall 2017 semester, Advanced Genetics and Writing Studies, would require alternative genre presentations of formal research projects. Hiller's Advanced Genetics alternative genre presentation, entitled Lay-Audience Presentation, would be directed to a community outside of the specialized sciences, while Cottle's Writing Studies alternative genre presentation would be directed to peers within the course. Initial plans were made to collaborate on the alternative genre projects for both courses, specifically to provide an actual lay audience for the Advanced Genetics students' presentations: the Writing Studies students (first-semester, first-year, premajor students representing a wide range of educational backgrounds, interests, and experiences).

Implementation: Fall 2017

August/September 2017: Early Weeks of the Semester: Establishing importance of External Audience and Awareness within Course Context

BIO 327/Advanced Genetics and WRT 181/Writing Studies were notified in their individual classes about the collaborative alternative genre project to be completed/assessed beginning after the mid-semester break. Hiller and Cottle discussed the project in a generalized manner with their respective classes, highlighting the importance of audience and language in regard to research and accessibility on individual, classroom, field, and disciplinary levels.

September/October 2017: Mid-Semester: Applications

Mark Hiller presented the assignment requirements, and criteria for the alternative genre presentation to the BIO 327/Advanced Genetics class topics assigned to students included the following: Capsaicin, Autophagy, Circadian Rhythms, Serotonin, Dog Genome Project Porphyria, Monarch Butterfly Migration, Stem Cell Cancers, CRISPER, Biological Sex Determination (nonhuman), Li-Fraumeni Syndrome, Aging, Progeria, Autoimmune Disease, Gene Therapy, CDKN2, Biological Sex Determination (human), Telomerase, and Alzheimer's Disease.

Assignment Requirements and Criteria for Alternative Genre Presentations

• • You will make a second presentation on the same subject. It will not be a traditional live presentation, but available to the audience online or as a physical object. In this presentation, your audience will be individuals who have not taken genetics. Students in a section of WRT 181 will review your work and help determine your grade for the project. It will also be available to the Advanced Genetics class. The format of the presentation can include, but is not limited to, podcast, video, music video, epic poem, graphic novel, children's book, or comic book. You may suggest other avenues for expression, but you must have your presentation format approved.

• • The project will be graded on three criteria:

  1. (1) 10 points Scientific information and explanations must be factually correct.

  2. (3) 20 points The presentation must be presented at a level that a nonbiologist can understand. This will be a challenging aspect of this assignment. Pay attention to the vocabulary you use and the assumptions of prior knowledge of your audience. Assume they are intelligent (they are), but naïve about the subject area.

  3. (3) 20 points The presentation must emphasize the significance and importance of the information to a nonbiologist. The audience should understand why this research or study is important.

Hiller proposed WRT 181 focus on (2) and (3) of the...