Natural Science in a History Museum: An Exercise to Engage Interdisciplinary, Applied, and Career-Oriented Thinking

Exterior view of Washington State History Museum in Tacoma
Credit: iStock.com/Colleen Michaels

My upper-level course on writing in the natural sciences was filled with technical writing or communication majors developing and honing their skills in writing, presentation, visual communication, and user experience strategies. Most had limited, if any, college-level natural sciences coursework. Students are taught to use the fundamental tenets of their home discipline—technical writing—and apply it outside of their discipline, the natural sciences. Since both technical writing and writing in the natural sciences engage in public communication, technical writing students should participate in what Salvo (2002) describes as “repeat[ed] cycles of observing, critiquing, articulating, and creating designs of information objects [i.e., texts].” Yet Johnson-Eiola (1996, 246) suggests that most technical communication projects enhance other processes, occupying “a secondary position to the users’ main objective . . . real work easily becomes defined in reductive, context-independent ways: small, decontextualized functional tasks rather than large, messy ‘real world’ projects.” Henning and Desy (2008, 41) amplify these considerations, further explaining that “students find it difficult to write in a manner that emphasizes the audience’s needs rather than the writer’s needs or the subject matter.”


To continue reading, you must be a Teaching Professor Subscriber. Please log in or sign up for full access.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Related Articles

I have two loves: teaching and learning. Although I love them for different reasons, I’ve been passionate about...
In a 2023 article published in The Hill, Sarah Eaton, an associate professor of education at the University...
Educators play a pivotal role in shaping students’ academic journeys, and their impact in the classroom extends far...
There are a myriad of answers to this seemingly simple question. Grading probably comes to mind for many...
Fears of disingenuous work, fraudulent and stolen information, and theft of intellectual property have been swirling around education...
Students often struggle academically due to an inability to organize their lives around achievable goals. Students beyond early...

Are you signed up for free weekly Teaching Professor updates?

You'll get notified of the newest articles.

The Teaching Professor Conference 2024

June 7-9, 2024 • New Orleans

Connect with Fellow Educators at The Teaching Professor Conference!