title: Critical Analysis of Primary Literature in a Master's-Level Class: Effects on Self-Efficacy and Science-Process Skills.
abstract: The ability to think analytically and creatively is crucial for success in the modern workforce, particularly for graduate students, who often aim to become physicians or researchers. Analysis of the primary literature provides an excellent opportunity to practice these skills. We describe a course that includes a structured analysis of four research papers from diverse fields of biology and group exercises in proposing experiments that would follow up on these papers. To facilitate a critical approach to primary literature, we included a paper with questionable data interpretation and two papers investigating the same biological question yet reaching opposite conclusions. We report a significant increase in students' self-efficacy in analyzing data from research papers, evaluating authors' conclusions, and designing experiments. Using our science-process skills test, we observe a statistically significant increase in students' ability to propose an experiment that matches the goal of investigation. We also detect gains in interpretation of controls and quantitative analysis of data. No statistically significant changes were observed in questions that tested the skills of interpretation, inference, and evaluation.
authors.affiliation: *Biomedical Sciences Graduate Program, Division of Biological Sciences, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093.
authors.forename: Christopher
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Abdullah
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Division of Biological Sciences, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093.
authors.forename: Julian
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Parris
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurosciences, Division of Biological Sciences, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093.
authors.forename: Richard
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Lie
authors.affiliation: Section of Neurobiology, Division of Biological Sciences, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093.
authors.forename: Amy
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Guzdar
authors.affiliation: Section of Cell and Developmental Biology, Division of Biological Sciences, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093 etour@ucsd.edu.
authors.forename: Ella
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Tour
mesh_terms: D001695:Biology / Q000193:education*; D002140:California; D003479:Curriculum; D004500:Education, Graduate; D004521:Educational Measurement; D006801:Humans; D017145:Models, Educational; D011642:Publications; D012106:Research / Q000193:education; D012586:Science / Q000193:education*; D020377:Self Efficacy; D013223:Statistics as Topic; D013334:Students; D013850:Thinking; D014495:Universities