The Scientific Literature Review

Once again I am happy to be working with the students in Mr. Kuzan's Capstone STEM class in helping them write their scientific literature reviews (SLR). What is an SLR? Well, it's a research paper that synthesizes the most recent information, found in general press and scholarly articles, about a particular topic and is used to by the students to decide the direction they want to take in completing their final capstone products. Because the capstone product has to be original, the SLR is used to inform the student, and his/her readers, about what has already been discovered or invented regarding their topic, so they do not have to re-invent the wheel.

The students look for newspapers and magazine articles in our science databases to see what the general public knows about the topic they are interested in researching. After reading those general press articles, the students then form a driving question to find out about the scientific studies that have been conducted regarding their topic. all along the way, the students document their search queries and take notes. They also learn how to create APA citations (no help from EasyBib, thank you very much) using a great citation maker found on the OSLIS website. My favorite part of this project is showing the students how to write in the APA format. While they take their notes, the students are encouraged to write one-paragraph summaries of the general press articles they read, but the summaries must be read in APA format. They use the Purdue OWL and Diana Hacker's APA handbook to see how they can incorporate in-text citations within their writing.

Here is the notes table I created for the general press articles. As the students read their articles, they are expected to complete these tables. In the summary section, they will write in-text citations following the APA format.

The journal articles have to be studies. These are not easy for the students to read because they often are written in technical jargon that is not easy to understand. So, upon reading their three studies, they are to answer six questions which keep them focused and make the reading less strenuous. Once they have read three studies, the students are asked to synthesize the information. Here is the organizer I created for that activity:

I learned about this project while attending a workshop led by Randall Schmidt at the NJEA Teachers' Convention in Atlantic City, NJ, a few years ago. Schmidt, among others, wrote Lessons for a Scientific Literature Review: Guiding the Inquiry which describes the steps involved in writing a SLR. Each chapter presents an easy to follow information literacy lesson that eases the dialogue between the librarian and the classroom teacher when planning. As the librarian, I know what information literacy skills to focus on for each step along the process. While Schmidt, et al. recommend eighteen lessons, you can make your own modifications by either extending or reducing the number of lessons.

This is such an awesome project that last year I shared it with all the other science teachers. So now every student in a science class in our school does a scientific literature review. However, there are some modifications and it is not as intense as what the STEM students have to do.