This is a literature review that I wrote in PWR 91NSC: Introduction to Science Communication. The class challenged us to choose a topic in our respective fields, and write two pieces about it: a literature review for an expert audience, and a public audience text for a lay audience.

This literature review assignment was very challenging for me, because I had a hard time compiling all the information in a way that made sense and was interesting for the reader. Looking back on this assignment, I think there was a huge difference between my first and my final drafts, because my writing process happened in two stages.

I used my first draft as a way to get content on the page. I just dumped all of the information I wanted to include, and went into quite a bit of detail about all the papers I was talking about. I think it was a good draft, and although it was definitely too descriptive and not analytical enough, it really helped me get all the information in one place. I think that’s when the not-so-fun part happened for me.

After that, I felt like I had all my sources and all the information I wanted, so it was just a matter of reorganizing that information. I really enjoyed trying to make a narrative out of the research I was presenting, changing the structure of a paper, and instilling a clear message throughout. I am proud of the final product because I think it is a lot more coherent than the first attempt. Overall, this second stage was really exciting, because I could focus on the framing of my arguments and how to interconnect the different research papers.

One of the main things I learned in the revision process is the value of visuals. Initially, I included all the results of all the papers in my text, which made it very hard to compare and contrast different works. I decided to make two result tables that readers can refer to if they want to understand exactly what the performance differences are, which allowed me to focus on the general trends in the text. I think this change also made the overall narrative clearer because it helped me focus on interpreting the results as opposed to simply stating them.

If I had more time (and more space), I would have liked to explain some of the metrics the different papers used. Currently, my literature review has no explanation of how the different metrics are computed, which makes comparing the papers hard for someone who doesn’t know anything about the task. For instance, some metrics are minimized and others are maximized, which makes the table a little more confusing. Adding more details would make the comparisons more relevant and clearer.