EDITORIAL GUIDE

E D U C AT I O N

Focus Issue: Teaching Tools and Learning Opportunities

Nancy R. Gough
Published 27 April 2010; Voluime 3 Issue 119 eg3

Science Signaling provides authoring experience for students and resources

for educators. Students experience the writing and revision process involved
in authoring short commentary articles that are published in the Journal Club
section. By publishing peer-reviewed teaching materials, Science Signaling
provides instructors with feedback that improves their materials and an outlet
to share their tips and techniques and digital resources with other teachers.

Science Signaling and Science team up

to tackle issues important to scientific education (www.sciencemag.org/special/
education2010/). Science emphasizes literacy in science with looks at both how to
understand scientific literature and how to
communicate science. Science Signaling
publishes, in the 20 and 27 April issues, a
set of Teaching Resources by Thatcher,
each of which is a pair of short animations
of a canonical signaling pathway, and a set
of Journal Club articles authored by students or postdoctoral fellows. The studentauthored Journal Club pieces cover diverse
topics, such as signaling in cells of the immune system, signaling in neurons, and
signaling in plants.
Nothing teaches better than experience,
and a core skill for any researcher or scientist is effective written communication.
Therefore, in the summer of 2007, Science
Signaling (then known as Sciences STKE)
launched the Journal Club section to allow
graduate students and postdoctoral fellows
to experience authoring a short commentary article on a specific recent research
article or a specif ic topic. Students or
postdoctoral fellows may submit a single
Journal Club article based on an assignment from a graduate course, based on articles discussed in a journal clublike setting as part of their laboratory experience
or a course, or based on an article that they
simply found interesting. For readers,
these articles present a fresh view of cell
signaling research. The authors gain experience in critical analysis of the scientific
literature and in the process of scientific
communication. Through a combination of
comments and tracked editorial suggestions for revising the text, the editors guide
the authors to express themselves clearly,

concisely, and accurately. Students or

postdoctoral fellows wishing to contribute
a Journal Club article should submit a
presubmission inquiry (http://stke.
sciencemag.org/cgi/feedback), including
an abstract and the key citations that they
propose to highlight.
Scientific communication also underlies
the ability to teach science and mentor the
next generation of scientists. Although
many scientists have little formal training
in education, most who hold academic positions have some responsibility for teaching students and training them to do research. Academic scientists may be members of the faculty of community colleges,
primarily undergraduate institutions, or research-intensive institutions. They may
find themselves teaching classes or entire
courses in areas in which they are extremely knowledgeable or in areas farther from
their areas of expertise. An academic scientist wears at least three hats: author (article
and grant writing), researcher (designing
and performing experiments), and teacher
(lecturing and mentoring). Teaching Resources published in Science Signaling
provide an opportunity for instructors to
share materials and experiences that have
helped them teach the complex topics related to cellular signaling. The types of materials encompassed by Teaching Resources
are diverse, ranging from animationslike
the ones highlighted in this issue by
Thatcherto syllabi; lecture notes; examples of how to run a journal club class or
how to use Web-based teaching tools; online courses or tutorials; lab exercises; and

Editor of Science Signaling, American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1200
New York Avenue, N.W., Washington, DC
20005, USA. E-mail, ngough@aaas.org

M. Munir, TRIM proteins: Another class of viral victims. Sci. Signal. 3, jc2 (2010).

Featured in This Focus Issue

Journal Club
B. I. Hutchins, Competitive outgrowth of neural processes arising from long-distance
cAMP signaling. Sci. Signal. 3, jc1 (2010).

R. Schneider, T cells with commitment issues. Sci. Signal. 3, jc3 (2010).

www.SCIENCESIGNALING.org

27 April 2010

Vol 3 Issue 119 eg3

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assessment strategies. Submitted Teaching

Resources are peer-reviewed for scientific
accuracy and edited for clarity of presentation and to maximize discoverability. Thus,
the authors receive feedback that improves
the quality of the materials that they have
developed, hopefully making them more
effective teachers. Teaching Resources are
not backed by research demonstrating that
students taught by teachers using these materials learn better than those taught with
other tools, but they do supply a starting
point for the scientist-educator to learn
from the experiences of his or her peers, to
minimize duplicated effort in developing
materials that are already available, and to
make it easier for scientists to teach.
Science Signaling is a founding partner
of the Biological Science Education Network (BEN; http://www.biosciednet.org),
a AAAS- and National Science Foundationfunded repository of peer-reviewed
teaching materials. By participating in the
development of this database, Science Signaling has helped define a cataloging system (metadata schema) so that digital resources from multiple sources useful for
teaching topics in biology can be included
in this repository. Teaching Resources published in Science Signaling are also indexed in BEN, thereby increasing their visibility. Other resources from Science Signaling that are indexed in BEN include
Podcasts, Perspectives, and Reviews, because these resources may also help facilitate student understanding of complex topics related to signal transduction or provide
background information for instructors.
Through these efforts and other resources available on the site, such as the
Glossary and the Educator Sites section of
ST NetWatch, Science Signaling is working with both scientists and students to improve scientific communication and increase scientific literacy.

EDITORIAL GUIDE
J. A. Ahamed, P. Madhivadhani, Costimulatory role of CXCR4
with pre-TCR and its crosstalk with PI3K in -selection of
thymocytes. Sci. Signal. 3, jc4 (2010).
A. K. Meyer, C. F. H. Longin, C. Klose, A. Hermann, New regulator for energy signaling pathway in plants highlights conservation among species. Sci. Signal. 3, jc5 (2010).
Teaching Resources
J. D. Thatcher, The Ras-MAPK signal transduction pathway.
Sci. Signal. 3, tr1 (2010).
J. D. Thatcher, The cAMP signal transduction pathway. Sci. Signal.
3, tr2 (2010).

Related Resources
Editorial Guides
E. M. Adler, N. R. Gough, Focus Issue: STNGSignal transduction, the next generation. Sci. STKE 2007, eg6 (2007).
Teaching Resources
R. L. Burks, M. M. Chumchal, To co-author or not to coauthor: How to write, publish, and negotiate issues of authorship with undergraduate research students. Sci. Signal. 2, tr3
(2009).
R. L. Patterson, Instructing graduate students to tackle the
real world: A course description. Sci. STKE 2007, tr3
(2007).
10.1126/scisignal.3119eg3

J. D. Thatcher, The TGF- signal transduction pathway. Sci.

Signal. 3, tr4 (2010).

Citation: N. R. Gough, Focus Issue: Teaching tools and learning opportunities. Sci. Signal. 3, eg3 (2010).

www.SCIENCESIGNALING.org

27 April 2010

Vol 3 Issue 119 eg3

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J. D. Thatcher, The inositol trisphosphate (IP3) signal transduction pathway. Sci. Signal. 3, tr3 (2010).

Focus Issue: Teaching Tools and Learning Opportunities

Nancy R. Gough (April 20, 2010)
Science Signaling 3 (119), eg3. [doi: 10.1126/scisignal.3119eg3]

The following resources related to this article are available online at http://stke.sciencemag.org.
This information is current as of December 4, 2015.

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