From jargon to impact: Teaching undergraduates the art of public communication

Two geography professors who have written 26 articles for The Conversation since 2017 published a paper in The Professional Geographer arguing that student exercises modeled on Conversation-style writing can teach undergraduates to communicate research to the public.

Their classroom method has students draft a pitch, write a short public-facing article, and revise it, mimicking the outlet's own editorial process, though students cannot actually publish through The Conversation itself.

The authors also note they enjoy watching their own articles' reader counts climb past thresholds like 70,000 in the outlet's dashboard, and recommend further research to measure whether any of this actually improves student learning.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.