Supervising Students in Scientific Writing for Peer Review & Possible Publication

Innovation in assessment of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) courses in subjects such as biology and biochemistry is a widely discussed topic. We report the use of a novel, research-integrated course assessment designed to increase students' self-motivation and improve their learning outcomes. We encouraged submissions to peer-reviewed journals, supported by stepwise supervision on writing by the instructor, which led to possible publication of some student-written articles. We compared the results from two classes in 2015 and 2016, assessing the quality of the published articles on the basis of journal impact factor, journal Scopus score, and number of citations of each article, using supervised assignments to fulfill this goal. Assessment of research-integrated biology learning via potential publishing may motivate students to actively learn a biochemistry topic and encourage early-career professional development.