Headline Bioethics: Engagement with Bioethics in the News

SHORT COMMUNICATION

Headline Bioethics: Engagement with Bioethics in the News Chris Willmott Department of Biochemistry, University of Leicester, Leicester, UK

Corresponding author: Chris Willmott, Department of Biochemistry, Henry Wellcome Building, University of Leicester, Leicester, LE1 9HN, UK. Email: [email protected]

Abstract An exercise is described in which second year undergraduate bioscientists write a reflective commentary on the ethical implications of a recent biological/biomedical news story of their own choosing. As well as being of more real-world relevance than writing in a traditional essay format, the commentaries also have potential utility in helping the broader community understand the issues raised by the reported innovations. By making the best examples available online, the task therefore has the additional benefit of allowing the students to be genuine producers of resources. Keywords: Bioethics, students as producers, authentic assessment, news broadcasts, student engagement

Introduction Reportage via popular media represents one of the major routes by which the general public engages with scientific information (Schäfer 2010). For example, innovations in medicine and biology are frequently described in news bulletins. For students on bioscience degree programmes, accounts of these discoveries demonstrate the importance of developments at the cutting-edge of their discipline. In addition to the scientific dimension, many of these breakthroughs raise important ethical questions about the role of bioscience in contemporary society. Since the UK Quality Assurance Agency benchmarking statements (Quality Assurance Agency 2007) have identified a need for all bioscience students to engage with these issues, it is this facet of the stories that serves as the focus for the exercise described here.

Description of core activity Since 2009, students have been asked to write a commentary on the ethical implications of a recent biological or biomedical news story. The exercise is assessed, representing 25% of the overall mark for a compulsory, 20-credit, second year Research Skills module. The course is the principal place where students receive introductory teaching on ethical theory © 2013 G. Scott, The Higher Education Academy

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Bioscience Education, Vol 21, Issue 1 (December 2013) doi:10.11120/beej.2013.00017

(as described elsewhere; Willmott 2011) as well as lectures on a number of bioethicallyimportant developments (genetic screening and preimplantation genetic diagnosis, stem cells, xenotransplantation, sustainability and biotechnology, neuroethics, animals in research, and gene therapy). The module is taken by approximately 150 students per annum and their interests cover the full spectrum of biological disciplines. Given this diversity of sub-specialisms, the students taking the course are given free choice regarding the theme of the story they elect to discuss. However a number of other constraints are imposed. Firstly, the focus for each commentary must be a news story from the previous calendar year (i.e. January 2012 to December 2012 for the 2013 cohort). This requirement prevents a small pool of ‘classic cases’ being revisited every year and reduces the likelihood of plagiarism (especially since, as discussed later, the best commentaries are made freely available online). Secondly, the story must not only have been covered by the BBC, it must also persist on their news website as a video of five minutes duration or less. This requirement ensures a degree of consistency in the format of the stories covered and spares students from the temptation to trawl the entire internet before homing in on a suitable report. The student commentaries are a maximum of 1000 words, of which no more than 200 words can be used summarising the content and context of the story. For the remainder of their piece, the students are required to focus on ethical arguments for and against their chosen development. The report must be suitably referenced, using the Harvard citation scheme, and at a minimum must include at least two sources of appropriate academic rigour. Marks are allocated as follows: 5% for selection and use of an appropriate clip; 25% for framing of the issues involved (i.e. the summary); 60% for discussion of the ethical issues (i.e. the main body of the text); and 10% for selection of appropriate sources and organisation of references. The students are given about four weeks to complete the task.

Challenges in the development of this activity From the outset, this task was designed to encourage students to reflect on the relevance of their subject discipline to wider society. Students are asked to write a commentary because this is a more ‘authentic’ assessment activity than producing a traditional essay (Swaffield 2011). Of course, the very novelty of the task creates the need for detailed guidance on the conduct of the assignment and the nature of the anticipated outputs. Over the early years, the briefing sheet for students has evolved in a number of ways to address emerging issues. Firstly, we offer detailed advice regarding the selection of an appropriate video clip, including the duration and content, as well as guidance on footage that will not be acceptable. Since choice of a suitable clip is part of the assessment criteria, it is also noted that staff will not be able to respond to requests for them to pick the best footage from a long-list offered by a student (as had occasionally happened in the first couple of years)! Secondly, we give specific instruction regarding referencing. Some of the issues here would be equally applicable to the writing of an essay, but the fact that the tasks starts with popular media coverage of an issue can lead students to rely entirely upon journalistic sources for their analysis as well, without engaging with sources of the required academic rigour. Thirdly, we reiterate that, for this task, the focus is on ethics (not primarily the science being reported) and that the students also need to discuss the context of the story (rather than simply to repeat the content of the video).

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C. Willmott

Anticipating some of these concerns, at least one example commentary on a different story has always been made available to students, in order to illustrate the required style and depth of analysis. In the initial years, a specimen document written by the current author was provided. Latterly, however, we have been able to direct students to several good examples of work written by previous cohorts. One further practical issue is worthy of note. Since the focus for our task is primarily upon ethical dimensions, we have involved colleagues from social sciences in marking of the assignments.

Secondary repurposing In addition to the initial value of the commentary as an assessed piece of work, the best summaries are made available as Headline Bioethics articles via Bioethicsbytes.wordpress.com, a website dedicated to discussion of bioethical topics as represented in a range of media (television, film, books and websites). Although the commentaries are lightly edited into a standard format, and occasionally for clarity and/or accuracy, the author credit goes entirely to the student who originally wrote the feature (Figure 1). In keeping with the ‘contributing student’ model, they are therefore bona fide producers of online resources for other users (Collis & Moonen 2006). Current students are pointed towards these materials to inform and inspire them about the kinds of accounts we would like them to achieve.

Figure 1 Montage of example commentaries (anonymised here) and the news stories which inspired them. © 2013 G. Scott, The Higher Education Academy

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Conclusions The Headline Bioethics task is an authentic assessment exercise involving students in the development of valuable reflective commentaries on current issues in biology and biomedicine. The emphasis, in our context, has been upon the ethical dimension of the stories, and this model could readily be adopted by colleagues seeking and engaging with the bioethical aspects of the news. However, the approach could easily be adapted for use with students at different stages of their education, to focus on media coverage of other aspects of bioscience or, indeed, to promote engagement with reportage related to other disciplines.

Acknowledgements The author is grateful to Jon Scott for useful conversations regarding the development of this activity.

References Collis, B. and Moonen, J. (2006) The contributing student: Learners as co-developers of learning resources for reuse in web environments. In Engaged Learning with Emerging Technologies (eds. D. Huang and M.S. Khine), pp49–67. Dordrecht: Springer. Quality Assurance Agency (2007) Benchmarking Statements for Bioscience, 2nd edition. Available at http://www.qaa.ac.uk/Publications/InformationAndGuidance/Documents/ Biosciences07.pdf (accessed 27 July 2013). Schäfer, M.S. (2010) Taking stock: A meta-analysis of studies on the media’s coverage of science. Public Understanding of Science 21, 650–663. DOI: 10.1177/0963662510387559. Swaffield, S. (2011) Getting to the heart of authentic Assessment for Learning. Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy and Practice 18, 433–449. DOI: 10.1080/ 0969594X.2011.582838. Willmott, C.J.R. (2011) Bioethics. In Effective Learning in the Life Sciences: How students can achieve their full potential (ed. D.J. Adams), pp175–194. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.

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