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Turning Scientific Presentations Into Stories

Journal of College Science Teaching— September/October 2015

To increase students’ confidence in giving scientific presentations, students were shown how to present scientific findings as a narrative story. Students who were preparing to give a scientific talk attended a workshop in which they were encouraged to experience the similarities between telling a personal anecdote and presenting scientific data. Participants used a template to compare the story structures of anecdotes and research findings and then practiced presenting their own experiments using a “conversational style”—that is, with a focus on “communicating ideas” rather than “performing well.” Further emphasis was given to the essential structure of storytelling, such that participants were shown how to create a well-organized talk by creating a basic outline and then expanding subpoints in a logical manner.
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