Pick Your Poison: A Semester-Long Case Study for Undergraduate Toxicology

The ability to collate information from diverse scientific resources and effectively employ scientific writing is an essential skill for scientists. This lesson describes a semester-long project entitled “Pick Your Poison,” which is designed for use in a one-semester Toxicology course. Students are each assigned to or choose their own individual toxicant as a case study from a pre-selected list of toxicants (poisons) that align with the theme of the course. As content is covered in the course, students complete ten scaffolded, low-stakes writing modules that are shared with groupmates of 4–5 students. Each module covers a major feature of the toxicant, such as chemical features, characteristics of absorption, distribution, metabolism, and elimination (ADME), and organ-specific toxicities. Students share their work with their group mates and the instructor, peer review one another’s work, and then edit their original post as appropriate to produce a concise, 3–4 paragraph product. At the end of the course, students compile their writing modules into an article in the format of the Encyclopedia of Toxicology. This project can be adapted to any toxicology course through alteration of the content and number of modules and/or the type of final deliverable. Several evidence-based and inclusive teaching practices are included, such as writing-to-learn, peer review, and low-stakes assessments.