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In an Introduction to Biology course for predominantly humanities majors, a structured semester project guided students through deliberate dissection of a self-selected primary research article. Students produced both written analysis and an oral presentation, progressing iteratively from article choice to final products. The study outlines objectives and complementary assessment tools, and faculty/student surveys indicate gains in scientific literacy and critical thinking.",{"@graph":69,"@context":114},[70,84,105],{"@type":71,"itemListElement":72},"BreadcrumbList",[73,77,79,82],{"item":74,"name":75,"@type":76,"position":8},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":78,"name":9,"@type":76,"position":14},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/",{"item":80,"name":40,"@type":76,"position":81},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/research-report/",3,{"item":83,"name":65,"@type":76,"position":19},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/improving-scientific-literacy-through-a-structured-primary-literature-project/594792/",{"url":83,"name":65,"@type":85,"image":86,"author":91,"headline":65,"publisher":94,"fileFormat":97,"inLanguage":63,"description":67,"dateModified":98,"datePublished":99,"encodingFormat":97,"isAccessibleForFree":100,"interactionStatistic":101},"DigitalDocument",{"url":87,"@type":88,"width":89,"height":90},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/improving-scientific-literacy-through-a-structured-primary-literature-project/594792.png","ImageObject",300,407,{"name":92,"@type":93},"Mary Man","Person",{"url":74,"name":95,"@type":96},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-10-29","2026-10-15",true,{"@type":102,"interactionType":103,"userInteractionCount":52},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":104},"ViewAction",{"@type":106,"mainEntity":107},"FAQPage",[108],{"name":109,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":111},"What evidence supports the effectiveness of the project and its tools?","Question",{"text":112,"@type":113},"Surveys from faculty and students suggest the project materials help improve scientific literacy and strengthen critical thinking skills.","Answer","https://schema.org",{"og:url":83,"og:type":116,"og:title":65,"og:site_name":95,"og:description":67},"article",{"robots":118,"canonical":83},"index,follow",{"doc_id":120,"site_id":62},594792,1792171509,{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":123},{"doc_id":120,"user_id":124,"nickname":92,"user_avatar":125,"doc_module":4,"category_id":39,"category_name":40,"doc_title":65,"doc_description":67,"doc_content":126,"file_id":127,"file_url":128,"file_type":129,"file_size":130,"view_count":52,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":8,"is_downloadable":8,"audit_status":8,"page_count":131,"language":132,"language_code":63,"site_id":62,"html_lang":63,"table_of_contents":133,"faqs":134,"seo_title":135,"seo_description":67,"update_tm":136,"read_time":137,"preview_page_count":4},7421720224475,"https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_276721f389ce27ea32af1340a28f341c","Improving Scientific Literacy through a Structured Primary Literature Project  \nMelissa Eslinger*, Ph.D. and Elizabeth Kent, M.S.  \nDepartment of Chemistry & Life Science, United States Military Academy, West Point, NY 10996  \n*[Corresponding Author:](Corresponding Author: melissa.eslinger@usma.edu)[ ](Corresponding Author: melissa.eslinger@usma.edu)[melissa.eslinger@usma.edu](Corresponding Author: melissa.eslinger@usma.edu)  \nAbstract: Emphasizing scientific literacy in the core science curriculum promotes informed students within a liberal arts education. In our Introduction to Biology course, which enrolls predominantly humanities majors in their final science course of their academic careers, we designed a project to advance these analytical processes through the deliberate dissection of primary literature. This project, completed over the course of one semester, includes both a written analysis and an oral presentation of a primary scientific article of the students’choosing. The students are guided through this iterative process from article selection to the completion of products. Within this work we detailed the objectives and created complementary tools to stimulate the progression of higher order cognitive skills and assist faculty in assessing the interpretations of applied biological concepts. Surveys from faculty and students suggest that this project and its supporting materials are useful to improve scientific literacy and improve critical thinking skills. Whether the audience is non-STEM majors or scientific minded persons, this project can be utilized to enhance critical analysis skills. Overall, we found this student-led group activity allowed for exploration of the scientific process outside of the classroom environment, which facilitated a more hands-on approach to developing increased scientific literacy in undergraduate students.  \nKey words: scientific literacy; metacognitive progression; scientific communication; primary literature analysis  \nINTRODUCTION  \nIncreasing scientific literacy is an important goal in undergraduate science courses (Gormally et al., 2012) . Rather than memorizing facts and information, applying knowledge through critical analysis stimulates higher-order cognitive skills (Zoller, 1993) . These skills reinforce course objectives and support the assessment of a deeper conceptual understanding. It is this understanding that can be applied in a larger context for students to exercise metacognitive skills when examining scientific literature. Biological courses can cultivate informed decision makers by practicing skills in scientific interpretation and communication (McPhearson et al., 2008) .  \nCritical thinking requires students to move beyond consumption of knowledge and into the analysis, evaluation, and synthesis of ideas. Faculty can foster these skills when training students to evaluate and discriminate the components of primary literature. Some have approached this goal by achieving information literacy in biology (Porter et al., 2010) by analyzing published data and discoveries from one particular laboratory over a period of years (Hoskins et al., 2007) . Others have integrated a cell biology laboratory project with a literature analysis  \n(Woodham et al., 2016) or drawn conclusions from figures in a specifically assigned paper (Round & Campbell, 2013) . These and others have demonstrated that upper-level biology courses benefit from the incorporation of primary literature module threads (Sato et al., 2014) or discipline specific article dissection (Kovarik, 2016) . While this concept of literature analysis is not entirely new (Gillen, 2007), our study concentrates on the deliberate progression of critical thinking skills (reading, evaluation, and synthesis) and strategic communication in a topic which may be otherwise unfamiliar to students. Previous work mentions the general gap of comprehensive tools to assess these guided development strategies to enhance higher cognitiv","cbCaiimql95D1cFH","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaiimql95D1cFH","pdf",286841,15,"English","# Introduction\n## Critical thinking and higher-order skills\n## Literature analysis approaches and research gap\n## Structured primary literature project overview\n# Cognitive progression and assessment mechanisms\n## Goal and cognitive progression levels\n## Key actions aligned with taxonomy progression","[{\"question\":\"What evidence supports the effectiveness of the project and its tools?\",\"answer\":\"Surveys from faculty and students suggest the project materials help improve scientific literacy and strengthen critical thinking skills.\"}]","Improving Scientific Literacy through a Structured Primary Literature Project | PDF",1792079854,38]