Enhancing Higher Education Students’ XXI Century Skills through Co-writing Activities in Science Teaching

Abstract

As many EU documents highlight, to improve competitiveness and professional/personal development, cross-sectional skills are to be enhanced as engines for social innovation: creativity, entrepreneurship, critical thinking and problem solving. The above skills, as many studies mention, are favoured by a cooperative approach. Scientific and technologic culture, relevant element of the shared encyclopaedia and the individual knowledge, also becomes a tool for social and political participation. The purpose of this work is to demonstrate that the cooperative approach and the critical use of technology, in particular in the field of science teaching, are the keys to single out solutions able to increase development and growth, from which, in turn, the whole society can benefit. In light of what above mentioned, that of the dissemination of popular science is, today, a duty of public institutions as well as a right of the citizens. Within the above context, the students’ module under investigation has been planned as a set of on-line group activities, with the general aim to provide useful elements to understand the typical characteristics of the language of science and create the structure of a creative text with a scientific topic through cooperative writing. Findings from the data collected after a specific assessment exercise are given and discussed, revealing as successful the combination of creativity and science topics.