To: Jackson Kuan, Commas Writing Team Member
From: Duffy Du, Commas Writing Team Member
Date: March 19, 2022
Subject: Peer Review of Formal Report Draft: Assessment of the Quality of Organic Chemistry Education at UBC
Thank you for submitting the formal report, “Assessment of the Quality of Organic Chemistry Education at UBC”. It is well written, organized and easy to read. Please see suggestions below:
First impression:
- Complete and well-written report on the topic of assessing the quality of organic chemistry education at UBC.
- Report is nicely organized into sections including letter of transmittal, abstract, table of contents, introduction, data section, conclusions, references and appendices.
- The research on the quality of organic chemistry education in UBC is backed up by primary data collected through interview and survey data and scientific evidence found in the literature.
Organization:
- The proposal is well organized in a logical and systematic manner.
- All the headings are bolded and appropriately titled with consistent formatting.
Content:
Letter of Transmittal:
- Well written letter of transmittal expressing appreciation for Dr. Stewart’s help and giving a nice summary about the content of the report.
Title and title page:
- Title page clearly indicated the audience of the report – Dr. Jaclyn Stewart and their credentials.
- Nicely formatted with everything at the center of the page.
Table of contents:
- Headings and subheadings of sections are divided by level and labelled with corresponding page number.
- Nice inclusion of an additional table of contents for figures and tables.
Abstract:
- The abstract clearly outlines the difficulties of studying organic chemistry and the need to design methods for presenting difficult material effectively and presents recommendations based on analysis of primary data (surveys) that suggest the promotion of active learning, learning via errors, and encouraging increased participation.
- One suggestion would be to move the beginning sentence “The assessment of the quality of organic chemistry education at UBC was analyzed based on the firsthand experiences of current and past undergraduate students” to after the current third paragraph in the abstract. An abstract usually opens with the rationale of the research and then the methods, results and conclusions.
- Mentioning that data was also derived from an interview with Dr. Stewart in the abstract clarifies the methods.
- The sentence “For students to receive a high quality of education, the institution and teaching staff should take these suggestions into consideration:” Adding the words “in organic chemistry” after “… quality of education” may help pinpoint the specific area of your research.
Introduction:
Background in organic chemistry:
- For the sentence “Organic chemistry is a staple in the academic careers of students pursuing a degree or career in the life sciences”. Avoiding the repetitive use of “career” may help with conciseness. For example, “Organic chemistry is a staple in the academic careers of life sciences students.”
- Combining these two sentences: “Organic chemistry has developed a negative…” and “This topic is difficult to learn because organic chemistry is…” might improve flow. For example, “Organic chemistry has developed… to learn for undergraduate students because it is not intuitive…”.
- Changing “… pictorial representations makes it so that organic chemistry is a language of its own…” to “… pictorial representations makes organic chemistry a language of its own…”.
Purpose of the report and analysis of concerns:
- Clearly outlines the purpose and the three main problem of concern for organic chemistry education: teaching method only encourage passive learning, lack of visual aid use, and ineffective evaluation methods.
- Great support drawing from scientific evidence on the effectiveness of using active learning methods and visual aids in organic chemistry education.
Potential Solutions to area of concern:
- Successfully provides three feasible solutions to the three areas of concern.
Research Methods:
- Clear description of methods used for research: survey and interview.
Scope of Inquiry:
- Clearly states the key research questions.
Data Section:
- Introduces participants’ demographic and distribution of participants in school years and courses taken. Data also nicely presented in figures.
- Analyzes the most effective teaching model from survey responses and interview information: teaching method that encourages active learning, training from experienced professors and evaluations methods that induce self-reflection.
- Additional scientific papers were cited to support arguments on active learning’s effectiveness in education.
- Overall, great job in this section. Nice organization of ideas with a well-balanced level of visuals.
Conclusion and recommendations:
Summary of results
- Instead of saying “active learning style of teaching”, may be better to use “a style of teaching that encourages (or promotes) active learning”.
Future Recommendations
- Bullet point list of recommendations derived from research findings is provided.
Limitation of this study
- Adding a sentence to finish the report off on a positive note avoids the negative tones that the limitation section has added.
References:
- References list presented in alphabetical order with proper APA citation formatting.
- One small fix is omitting the numbers in front of the citations as you refer to them by last name and year in your in-text citations.
- Avoiding use of hyperlinks in references and keeping everything in black text without underline.
Appendices:
- The detailed survey and interview questions used for research is clearly outlined in the appendices.
- Questions are well thought out and effective in evaluating student and instructor opinions on the current state of organic chemistry education.
Style:
- Overall, positive and objective tone demonstrating YOU-Attitude.
Design:
- Reader-friendly and visually appealing design of the report with a good balance of figures, tables, text and headings.
Concluding comments:
Overall, a very well-written formal report with lots of details. Only a couple of things to improve for the final version:
- Combining some sentences for a more concise and succinct expression.
- Moving methods sentences in the abstract to improve flow of ideas.
- Omitting the numbers in front of the citation list and keeping all text black and not underlined (avoiding the use of hyperlinks).
- Finishing off the report on a positive note.
I hope the review will provide some insights into what to improve on for the final version of formal report. Feel free to contact me any time if you have any questions!
Link to Jackson Kuan’s formal report: Assessment of the Quality of Organic Chemistry Education at UBC
Thank you,
Duffy Du
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