Improving Students’ Written Communication of ... √

In many fields, students need to develop the ability to communicate complex quantitative data, including the evidence that supports their interpretation of data. In this workshop, we’ll demonstrate an intervention that STEM and social science instructors can adopt to effectively support students’ learning to write clear, concise, and accurate comparative evidence statements–statements such as, "The incidence of X is 3 times higher than the incidence of Y." Interpreting such statements represents a crucial step in the analysis of many kinds of data. The approach we’ll demonstrate parses the syntax of evidence statements into meaningful chunks that help students understand the data. Focusing on these statements has been shown to improve students' writing and facilitate grading.