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Learner Reviews & Feedback for Writing in the Sciences by Stanford University

4.9
stars
8,321 ratings

About the Course

This course teaches scientists to become more effective writers, using practical examples and exercises. Topics include: principles of good writing, tricks for writing faster and with less anxiety, the format of a scientific manuscript, peer review, grant writing, ethical issues in scientific publication, and writing for general audiences....

Top reviews

SD

Feb 25, 2020

Respected Dr.kristiani sainani madam and coursera.

I thank you for the wonderful classes and presentations, it really didn't made me feel that i was learning online course but as in class learning.

AL

Jun 3, 2019

This was an amazing course that really helped me with my medical writing skills and understanding how making things clear for all audiences can help in spreading scientific knowledge across the world.

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126 - 150 of 2,766 Reviews for Writing in the Sciences

By Hugo D S C

•

Sep 27, 2021

Some questions in the HW at the final of each unit are ambigous in my opinion, for example in unit 1: "There are extensive quality control measures that are unique to this pipeline" my response was "Exist extensive quality control measures that are unique to this pipeline" that in my opinion is acceptable but I tried with many oders posibilities but I always got wrong. Or "She was not a good student." my response for this was "She was a disadvantage student" that eliminate the "not", but neither with others options. I don't know where I made a mistake and in feedback just appear "Incorrect". Writing in the sciences was really fruitful for me, it is a great course. Thank you very much. Hugo David Sánchez Chávez.

By Camila D R

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Sep 14, 2021

Coming from a third-world country and studying science has been a rollercoaster; the lack of good professors or teaching methods made it even more challenging. They never showed us how to do the writing process, and when I had to write my first two works, I was unconfident about my skills, and the process was horrible. Soon I'll be starting my master's degree and what worried me the most was how lacking my writing skills were. However, after taking this course, especially receiving corrections and feedback from my companions and reviewing their work, I feel more comfortable and excited to write. Thank you so much, Dr. Kristin Sainani. I will work hard and improve the skills you showed me during this course.

By Raghav C

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May 12, 2020

First of all, I am grateful to Dr. Sainani and Coursera for putting up such a well organized course.

The guidelines provided in this course will certainly spare me several frustrating hours of trial and error, trying to piece together a "good scientific manuscript".

The course however, is not restricted to writing just journal articles. It also provides an excellent initiation into the skill of writing grants, LOR, personal statements, review articles.

There is also something in store for those who may want to pursue a career in science communication in the future.

I personally enjoyed the interviews with the journal editors and Dr. Sainani's former students.

All in all, this course is an all-round package.

By Jayakumar R I

•

Jun 18, 2020

Very useful course. It gave me a good understanding of the jargon and unpack of science. I would greatly appreciate if a course on thesis writing and research proposal drafting could be given by the instructor. Dr. Kristin Sainaini has well explained the process of writing. I felt a bit bored only when interviewing the scientist and getting information and vice versa. On the other hand, the tips for writing a research paper by senior editors were very much enlightening.

Thank you Dr. Kristin Sainaini and Coursera

Regards

Dr. Jayakumar Rajamani Iyer,

Assistant Professor - Environmental Science,

GITAM (Deemed-to-be-University)

Bengaluru Campus,

Nagadenahalli - 562163

KARNATAKA , INDIA

e-mail: jrajaman@gitam.edu

By Rkayed

•

Feb 1, 2021

This course is aimed primarily at people who wish to write about scientific research with many examples from the science field. However, it is also useful for improvement of general writing skills because it covers grammar and punctuation; writing in the active voice; pre-writing; the writing process and editing, among other topics. The process for writing scientific manuscripts e.g. methods, figures, discussion and results are very helpful (especially for newcomers).

The course gives guidance on other relevant topics e.g. plagiarism and authorship; grants and writing letters of recommendation. In less depth, there is advice on speaking to the media and using social media to spread scientific knowledge.

By Ana C

•

Nov 21, 2022

This course has to be mandatory.... The teacher is wonderful, focused, funny and very efficient. I don´t have words enough to describe how much I have learnd and enjoy every practice challenge. No waste of time at all, I wish this teacher prepared more writing courses (is her talent!). THANK YOU VERY MUCH.

Este curso tendría que ser obligatorio para todos los estudiantes post-doctorado. Aunque el sistema anglosajón es diferente del americano, la profesora (cuya buena energía es contagiosa), está focalizada en el tema, no divaga, sabe de lo que habla a la perfección, pone prácticas para que aprendas... es que me ha encantado, la verdad. Ojalá esta profesora tuviera más cursos aquí, los haría sin dudar!

By Rita P

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Feb 25, 2021

I found this course very useful for my young scientist career. For me, it helped me to improve my thesis writing. English is not my native language so that class about grammar tips and most common mistakes was very helpful for me.

One thing that I also enjoyed was having the opportunity to evaluate my collegues work and vice-versa. Unfortunately I did not receive feedback about the longer task we had (resume an article, do an introduction or an abstract...), therefore I would like to recommend more shorter tasks for this kind of grading. Nevertheless, the comments I have received on other tasks were very important for my writing.

I will recommend this course on my LinkedIn account! Thank you so much.

By Serena D V

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Apr 11, 2021

Very informative and clear. I appreciated the extra content as well as the many examples.

It was nice to get feedback from the other students, I mostly experienced nice and constructive feedback that was very useful to improve my writing.

Only sometimes, I saw comments that were unnecessarily aggressive or superficial. Remember that we are all here to learn and even a harsher criticism can be presented nicely. As for superficial comments, made only to fill the blank space: if you spend 3 minutes on giving feedback instead of 20 seconds, you only "wasted" 2 min and 40 seconds of your time, while somebody else got to learn something. Wouldn't you want the same from the others?

By Victor M

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Apr 6, 2022

Outstanding course!

The tips and content are very useful and did change my whole relationship with writing and reading. I recommend it for post-graduation students that, just like me, are starting an academic career.

Dr. Kristin Sainani's passion for writing is engaging and inspires the student for further improvements. The course also contains interviews with distinguished experts that successfully unravel the stressful process of publishing.

I must say that the proposed structure of a scientific manuscript does not always apply (for example, in applied social science). However, it's understandable that the course is designed for the biological field.

By Sergio A P P

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Jun 10, 2018

As a pre-grade student I really apreciate have learnt diferent types of sccientific and academic texts; I liked to think over scientific publish future and the responsability as a future scientist to spread the results en discovers of my investigations and projects. Finally a already put on practice the skills I got, reviewing critically the papers i had to reed this semester and of course using all the good writting tips when writing my subjects homeworks ; Thank to all the team that made this course possible , specially the teacher; Hi from Chile ; Sergio Andrés Plaza Plaza -- Student of natural resources engineering at Austral University of Chile.

By KR

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May 8, 2020

I really enjoyed the course and recommend others to take it. Even though I am in research for little less than two decades, no one every taught me how to write a research article. I used to learn it by reading manuscripts and observing the edits of my professors. Now, I understand and know why they were editing in certain ways. In addition, no one taught me how to peer review articles as well. This course covers how to write research articles, peer reviews, news reports and appear media interviews as well. Moreover, you can learn about how to tweet articles and news items. I highly recommend this course for researchers at all stages of their career.

By Margaret N

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Jun 24, 2020

I really enjoyed the course which was very well organized and covered a great amount of information in depth. Dr. Kristin Sainani is an excellent and extremely thorough lecturer. She would refer back to information from earlier modules through the whole course so that the information would be integrated systematically. She is also passionate and dedicated about her subject and very engaged in developing new editors and writers. I learned a lot.

I particularly liked the sample edits so that I could see the approach she took, the reasons she made the edits, and the overarching organization that the edits supported.

Thank you very much, Dr. Sainani

By stacyg

•

Aug 8, 2020

Dr. Sainani is an excellent teacher. I recommend this course to everyone who want to learn how to write and edit more clearly, and not restricted to just the sciences. I just finished an English degree that focused on this material and was shocked by how much I was still able to learn from this free course. There's a lot of helpful advice here on concision, word choice, and structure. The professor also provides many "demo edits" to practice your skills before learning how she--an expert writer and editor--would edit them in a video. This course is put together very well; I really can't say enough good things about it. Thank you Dr. Sainani.

By Angela S C

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Feb 1, 2021

I am a post-doc researcher and performed this course before writing my thesis. I revisit it from time to time and has been so far the most useful course I done in Coursera. The general tips for writing are incredibly useful and were, at the beginning, a bit again my believes of what is scientific writing. However, through all the examples and practices it became clear that these tips are really useful and lead to a more clear, scientific and easy-to-read writing. Plus Dr. Kristin Sainani is amazing at teaching and it was a pleasure to learn under her guidance. An absolute must for people who need to generate scientific manuscripts/reports!

By Eszter N

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Jun 3, 2020

This course is filling a gap in my PhD education in Hungary. Yet, its content is essential to "survive" and become a good researcher, so it was really valuable for me to be able to access it and enroll, even if I'm in the last year of the PhD program. I'd like to thank to Dr. Sainiani and all her colleagues who helped to create this valuable course. Personally, it is a great start for me to begin writing my PhD thesis, a lot of inspiration and valuable tips in the writing style (even if my research field is far from medical). And the other tips I will be able to take with myself for future publications! Thank you again!

By Fabian E

•

Jun 30, 2022

Thank you so much Dr. Kristin Sainani

You are an authority and a great teacher in Writing in the Sciences. The course is an eye-opener. I have learned a great deal, especially in the area of structure-parallelism, active voice, and review articles.

Please due to my work schedule which leaves me scanty time to do other things, I would like to access these great lectures from time to time for refreshing. 

How long will these lectures be there to be accessed from the completion date? Is there any certificate for successful completion of the course?

What advice do you have for me?

ThanksFabian EboguCell: 856-397-1181 

By James F

•

Aug 30, 2020

Kristin,

As a mid-career clinician I have published previously, read thousands of papers and written countless letters of recommendation. More recently I have tried (and failed) to publish some pieces in medical journals in the "viewpoint" or "perspectives" sections.

I came to your course to humbly learn about how I might do things better and I have.

Writing will remain hard work, but I hope that I might successfully put some of this learning to good effect in the years ahead.

I will recommend this course enthusiastically to others, so look to see if there's an uptick in Australian candidates.

Cheers,

James Fink

By Beth F

•

Dec 2, 2022

This course discussed the basics for competent writing in the sciences. I appreciate that strategies for creating and reviewing manuscripts, plain language summaries, and proposals were included.

Dr. Sainani included other voices (Dr. Efron, Dr. Lundberg, Dr. Friedman) for participants to hear from other experts in the writing field. I would have appreciated one of these interviews to be with someone from outside academia.

Finally, search engine optimization is a topic that scientific writers - particularly outside of academia - would benefit from understanding. A module on this topic would be helpful.

By Fatima G

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Feb 4, 2023

A phenomenal resource for communicators across the board. I'm so grateful it is free and flexible in schedule. The demo edits were great exercises to put into practice the theories, and the feedback was instant in the videos. I think further courses on lay audience publications would be immensely welcomed. I am very curious to learn how a career as a science journalist grew from a start in statistics, and if doing it this way was significant to your ability to learn data for yourself before reading concconcluding remarks in any publication? Finally, thank you very much and wishing you a bbeautiful day.

By Sina K

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Jul 13, 2023

This is my first experience completing a course on Coursera and it was an honor to have it from Stanford University. I thank a lot from the tutor of this course, Dr. Kristin Sainani. Her patience in teaching and her discussions were catching and delightful. The materials of this course were perfect—especially the demo lessons at the end of each week and the assignments. Besides, the slides were enough, they weren't too much to be exhausting. Finally, I found this course so helpful and I think that every student who wants to pursue his/her academic career should pass this practical course.

Sina Khaleghi

By Mukvych V

•

Jan 3, 2023

Thank you for this wonderful course, which can help many scientists improve and gain new skills. The knowledge that you will gain after completing this course will make it easier for you to work in the future. You will not need to collect some information in parts, this work has already been done on this course, and you just have to absorb all the information like a sponge. In today's world, things are changing very quickly, and scientists need to learn the practical skills of good writing, techniques for writing faster and with less anxiety, and writing scientific publications for a wide audience.

By Daniel B

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Oct 27, 2017

It's a great course. I learned many useful things, from the more general things to the details. I appreciate also the lessons on the writing and publishing process, and the communication tasks scientists must deal with. My main critique regards the writing of personal statements and letters of recommendation: I believe that resorting to too many personal things in these kind of instances is an instrumentalization of our personal lives and activities. In addition, it may give way to fake or exaggerated statements. Anyway, I highly recommend taking this course if you want to improve your writing!

By Mohamed N

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Jul 19, 2020

I am so pleased to have this amazing course. I learned much. I can't count skills I learned. But I now could try to wrize a manuscript, edit others writing,write for lay audience, learned how draft a complete manuscritp with good steps, and about submission process. As I said I can't count what I learned but it is a great chance to take a course from Stanford University. I greatly thank Coursera platform for their great services, as people say it is availble for each learner, provides teching courses in nearly all fields. I hope take more and more courses from Coursera platform.

Great Thanks.

By Christina C

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Nov 24, 2020

Dr. Sainani is a pro at this. I enjoyed the honesty, real examples, and the application to all areas of writing. The concept is universal: make it clear and enjoyable to consume for any educated reader. I ended the course feeling happy and grateful to have been taught valuable lessons. I also appreciated that the course was doable for a working mom at home with a toddler during a pandemic.

This course is engaging, fulfilling, and just plain necessary. Honestly, I wish I had this information earlier on in my career, it would have done me some justice. Thank you, Dr. Sainani! Well done.

By Nilesh J

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May 13, 2020

I am very happy with the course. It is planned and executed in a thorough professional way. I am very happy with the way Dr Sainani has conducted the course. Her voice modulation and way of explaining the course material is very good , she keeps the audience engaged. I have published 18 papers till now, i wonder why did it not strike me earlier to take this course, it would have made my papers much better.

I am thankful to Dr Sainani for her wonderful efforts in conducting this course. I will surely recommend this course to my friends in my field.

Thank You

Regards

Dr Nilesh V Joshi