An Effective Technique for Reading Research Articles - The Japanese KENSHU Method

Abstract

A number of recent journal articles are devoted to writing (1), communicating (2 and references therein), teaching techniques (3, 4), and involving students in scientific discussions (5), but few articles have appeared that can help students become familiar with reading scientific literature. Many instructors already include the reading of research articles as part of a student's normal assignments. We would like to propose a method for teaching the reading of research literature that helps a student develop confidence and understanding. It has been used successfully for developing literature skills with high school, undergraduate, and graduate students in the U.S. engineering curriculum. The method, which has the Japanese name KENSHU, was developed by modifying a system used at a top Japanese national university.KENSHU is Japanese for research understanding. The basic steps of KENSHU are (i) take a recent foreign (English) scientific article and divide it into sections, (ii) read and discuss a single section with a more experienced classmate, (iii) translate the section, (iv) continue step iii until all sections are finished, (v) prepare a onepage summary of the article with key graphs and tables, and (vi) present the findings of the article at a miniconference.In this work, we have put into words the aspects of reading a scientific article incorporating the KENSHU framework. We applied the method to U.S. university juniors, seniors, and graduate students as well as junior and senior high school students. KENSHU Implementation And OverviewStudents have their own individual article to study throughout a given semester or research session. We begin by providing each student with the first page of a recent research article and set deadlines for completion of KENSHU guideline steps noted below. We act as a facilitator of information transfer and suggest resources where students can obtain additional information or explanations. The students work in groups (each has a different paper) and follow KENSHU guidelines to develop a final one-page summary of the article and an oral presentation to explain its concepts. We incorporate KENSHU into our courses, which allows us to give stu-

Teaching students to read the primary literature using pogil activities

“…Faculty have included the primary literature in undergraduate courses for years. In addition to approaches which simply expose students to articles, there are descriptions in the science education literature of courses or assignments that focus on reading and interpreting data from the primary literature . Most of the published approaches fall into two categories: 1) courses that are based on articles from the primary literature and are often focused on one topic and 2) the use of one or more papers within the context of a traditional content‐based class .…”

“…As exciting as the literature‐based courses are, not everyone has the opportunity to develop an entire course based on articles from the primary literature. Many professors have reported methods that incorporate one or more articles from the primary literature into an existing course . A variety of approaches are used, including students working on different articles in the same subject area , small groups , journal clubs , and as homework .…”

“…Many professors have reported methods that incorporate one or more articles from the primary literature into an existing course . A variety of approaches are used, including students working on different articles in the same subject area , small groups , journal clubs , and as homework . Many of these strategies also include a component of inquiry‐based learning .…”

“…A variety of approaches are used, including students working on different articles in the same subject area , small groups , journal clubs , and as homework . Many of these strategies also include a component of inquiry‐based learning . Some of these use only a single article in the class or have a single article assignment where students have different articles, but are only responsible for one during the semester/quarter .…”

“…Many of these strategies also include a component of inquiry‐based learning . Some of these use only a single article in the class or have a single article assignment where students have different articles, but are only responsible for one during the semester/quarter . Others professors are using multiple successive exposures to the literature .…”