Communication is an important skill to have in the biological sciences, as it is the link between theory and practice. As part of third year ecology at Curtin University, students are expected to demonstrate their communication and presentation skills as part of a 'poster day' initiative. This initiative is weighted at 10% of the final semester mark, and asks students to prepare an informative poster on a topic chosen from a list provided by the teaching staff.

The preparation of large scientific reports is a key component of many high-level science subjects. While such reports give students valuable professional experience, they are difficult and time consuming to assess and feedback is often not incorporated into subsequent reports. Taking a "project management" rather than "reviewer" role in assessing scientific reports is a way to increase the quality of reports and prepare students for the workplace.

In an effort to introduce the concept of metacognition to my Aquatic Biology students I asked them to revisit their first assignment after it had been marked. This assignment is a critique of a scientific paper that many students have difficulty with. I wanted to talk to them explicitly about the strategies that they had used to tackle this assessment task and allow them to think about the way they approached it. I returned the marked assignment to them in class with a mark but no comments and had a general discussion of how some class members had tackled it.