Promoting science communication skills in the form of oral presentation through pictorial analogy

Prospective biology teachers are demanded to have skills in communicating science in the form of oral presentation when someday they teach. However, over-expectation towards biological concept comprehension has led them to lower their participation in class. In such a case, rote learning is standing still to support biological content knowledge delivery in university level and thus impoverish the potential of them due to its excessive practice. This study then comes to explore the significant improvement over the use of pictorial analogy to promote university students' skills in science oral communication towards the nervous system topic. Case study has been a design for the study. It involved two group of different students who participate in natural setting of human anatomy and physiology course. The data was gathered by observation and analyzed in descriptive manner. Quantitative and qualitative data are mixed up altogether to describe the reality behind learning process. The result showed that although both high and low achieving students are successful to communicate science concepts through pictorial analogy they are different in the way they accomodate what they want to explain. High achieving students outperform low achieving students in all aspects of oral presentation. They also employ more complex sources to draw the target concepts. To sum up, pictorial analogy can be used as a tool for students to do science communication skill in the form of oral presentation.