Assessment Practices to Support Communication in Biology: Understanding Student Behaviour

Undergraduate science courses typically lack the variety of assessment tasks necessary to facilitate the development of the range of communication types needed in the workplace, such as writing reports and presenting findings. Models of implementing change are scarce, and there is little in the literature to indicate how to teach communication in a scientific context. To scaffold and implement change in assessment, it is helpful to understand how students use the learning materials provided. This research indicates that there is little change in the way students approach assessment tasks throughout an undergraduate degree program. In contrast, postgraduate students use significantly different methods in their learning, employing a wider range of strategies to develop writing skills. Understanding how this difference in learning strategies develops provides an opportunity to address the gap in learning and support a wider range of communication skills for graduates. This study contributes to our understanding of how students develop communication skills by proposing new assessment models and suggesting interventions to enhance communication skills in both undergraduate and postgraduate science education. Using a mixed-methods approach, key findings were derived from surveys and analysis of assessment performance, highlighting the distinct learning strategies between undergraduate and postgraduate students.