Welcome from Brenton - Dean Teaching and Learning

Hello bloggers and welcome to the Scientists Write! blog at the University of South Australia.

I am Brenton Dansie, Dean of Teaching and Learning for the Division of Information Technology, Engineering and the Environment here at UniSA.


I am delighted to contribute to this blog. I hope that you will take the opportunity to become involved.

Writing is a very important component of scientific work. It plays a critical role in research and the modern workplace. Scientists and Engineers need to be able to communicate their work with each other. Within the workplace you will often work in large project teams on the development of new and innovative products and services. The ability to be able to document user requirements, critical aspects of the design process, testing and evaluation processes and outcomes and budget matters are critical elements of a successful project.There are two key pieces of advice that I would give to you.

It is critical that you understand the audience/person you are writing for. What is important to the people who will read your work? What sort of style will appeal to them? What is the important thing that they are most interested in?

The second piece of advice is that in most situations you will be required to present an argument of some kind. This is quite different to writing up a prac or a maths assignment. It is very important that you find ways to be able to successfuly present an argument when you write. This means thinking about how you structure the logic of your argument and, particularly, how you incorporate evidence to support your argument.

Evidence takes many forms including the use of data and graphs. In most cases the success of your writing will be judged on how well you are able to present an argument which causes the reader to make a judgement on some aspect of your work in your favour.

I hope that you find that this blog helps you to develop this important skill.