Lost in translation: Quantifying the overlap of popular media and non-majors science course assessment vocabulary

Background/Question/Methods   Earth's climate is rapidly changing. Complex forces drive climate change over multiple scales of space and time. Citizens of the 21st century will need to act based on informed decisions about climate change. A liberal education should contribute to an informed and responsible citizenry who can think independently, reason analytically, and communicate effectively. Following college graduation, the typical American will gain most of their science information through the media. The question becomes, how well are we preparing students to be effective, critical consumers of media-reported science? We broach this subject by comparing the vocabulary of the undergraduate science for non-science majors classroom against multiple popular media sources. Using PASW Text Analytics for Surveys, we objectively identified key terms from both classroom and media sources, and grouped these terms into the major reservoirs and fluxes of the carbon cycle. Our classroom data include five years of exams and quizzes from biology and physical science courses taught at a large, research intensive university. Media reports were collected the week before, after, and during COP15 from daily, weekly and monthly media sources (i.e., AP, blogs, Time, Newsweek, Vanity Fair, and local and national newscasts).

Results/Conclusions   Of the 253 items analyzed (183 media responses, 70 assessment responses), we extracted and used 310 relevant terms and grouped those into 19 categories based on the carbon cycle. The proportion of items falling into a category was dependent on source. Terms extracted from assessment items fell largely into categories of rock/reef (43%), atmosphere (27%), and water (22%). Conversely, media items fell largely into soils (96%), humans (96%), and diffusion of carbon in/out of the ocean (94%). Many faculty teaching non-major science courses express a desire to teach their students enough science to make sense of an article in the science section of the New York Times. Indeed, many courses for non-science majors have a goal to improve students' abilities to apply scientifically sound reasoning and knowledge within their everyday lives. Our analysis reveals a discrepancy between the vocabulary used in media sources and in course assessments. We suggest non-major science courses do more to explicitly tie scientific processes to current political, economic and social discussions. For many students, these courses represent the only science class they will take. The vocabulary they learn today should prepare them to make informed decisions tomorrow.