Training in scientific writing and the "learning organization"

One of the major problems for research mentors is that every new student will usually make the same mistakes that previous students have made. While making mistakes is part of the educational process, mistakes can be painful for mentors and students alike. Painful for mentors since they have seen it all, and painful for students since if they have more help they would be able to progress in a faster way. This problem gave rise to the idea of a "learning organization" in the training of novice scientific writers.

The concept is pretty simple: Since all of our manuscripts are written in an on-line environment, every time a student makes a mistake in a manuscript, the mentor makes a note that is accessible to students as well as to the director of our scientific writing program. The director is in charge of making sure that the mistake pattern identified by the mentor is added to the educational material available to other students. Because students are aware that the educational material is based on real previous mistakes in order of occurrence, they will be less likely to make the same mistakes again.

Educational material includes reading material on the rhetorical theory behind scientific writing, wiki pages containing advice about text structure templates, educational screencasts, and simulation environments. The "learning organization" structure is built since every time a new student comes in, before they are exposed to the mentor they go through the educational material and so are less likely to repeat the same mistakes. Better yet, even if they make the same mistake, they will be faster to recognize it once corrected by the mentor.