Revision of soil science curricula to include opportunities for student environmental writing may help to overcome declining enrollments in soil science by attracting undergraduate students interested in environmental issues to learn about soil science. Experience in environmental writing also may help prepare future soil science and natural resource professionals to communicate with diverse audiences in a variety of formats and media. Starting in 2000, the University of Missouri (MU) Soil Science Program and the MU Campus Writing Program initiated a research and teaching effort to: (i) assess the need for science and nonscience majors to improve their writing skills; (ii) develop a writing‐intensive soil science course as part of the writing across the curriculum (WAC) program that would improve writing skills and encourage students to learn more about soil science and its role in addressing environmental issues; and (iii) evaluate the success of this approach. A survey of former MU science and nonscience majors indicated that both groups ranked writing skills as important in their current jobs. Most undergraduate students currently enrolled in soil science courses experienced limited opportunities to write in both their secondary and undergraduate science classes. An undergraduate writing‐intensive soil science course entitled Soils and the Environment was initiated to emphasize the role of soil science in environmental issues and provide writing exercises for realistic target audiences. Student writing from the course was published with the assistance of MU journalism and graphic design students. Student evaluations indicated that the course improved their writing skills and stimulated their enthusiasm for the subjects discussed in the course. The results of this experiment to include environmental writing opportunities in a soil science curriculum suggest that writing may be an important active‐learning tool to promote undergraduate student interest and motivation to study soil science.

Previous research has indicated that engineering faculty do not follow best practices when commenting on students' technical writing. However, it is unclear whether the faculty prefer to comment in these ineffective ways, or whether they prefer more effective practices but simply do not enact them. This study adapts a well known study of response in composition to ask whether engineering faculty prefer authoritative, form-focused comments, or whether they may prefer to write different sorts of comments. We asked ten civil engineering faculty to comment on a sample paper and then rank their preferences for provided versions of comments on the same paper. One provided version emphasized comments on content, one emphasized comments on form, and one was balanced. Comparisons of the respondents' preferences and practices suggest that the engineering faculty recognize and value content-focused, non-authoritative responses, but generally do not write comments that conform to these values. We consider the implication of these findings for research on response to technical writing as well as for technical writing faculty in their own course. While recognizing the need for more research, we also discuss ways in which writing professionals, including WAC administrators and technical writing professors, can encourage engineering faculty to enact their preferences for response styles that reflect best practices.

Increased opportunities for undergraduate students in agricultural and natural resource disciplines to write for diverse audiences besides their instructor may increase motivation to write and improve student writing skills. The objectives of this teaching research were to determine and compare the initial writing experience of students enrolled in introductory and more advanced level soil science courses, develop a writing assignment that uses an agricultural extension style to improve student writing skills and consideration of their target audience, create a method using web‐based technology to facilitate posting, reading, and student evaluation of the written materials, and evaluate the success of the approach using student evaluations of the assignment and the course from both the introductory and advanced students. Initial surveys of students in an introductory soils course and a more advanced soil fertility course at the University of Missouri in Columbia (UMC) during 2005 and 2006 indicated that undergraduate students have limited science writing experience as beginning students and they develop greater awareness of the need for more science writing experience as they progress in their undergraduate education. In addition, most of the undergraduate students surveyed in this research had limited experience writing a publication for an audience other than their instructor. The students recognized publication for different audiences as an effective tool to make them write more carefully and clearly and also as a way to provide them with more self esteem as science writers. A writing assignment was developed for students in the UMC soil fertility course in 2005 and 2006 to prepare short extension documents regarding the properties and management of essential plant nutrient elements with the students in the introductory soils course being their target audience. These texts were organized into a secure website using WebCT, a web‐based course management software. This website allowed the introductory students to read each text and then provide their evaluations by responding to a short six question survey using the online quizzes and survey tool in WebCT. The ratings and comments of the introductory students were then returned to the original student authors of each text to provide them with feedback regarding the effectiveness of their writing. Some difficulties in coordination of the assignments between the two courses caused an undesirable delay between the completion of the student publication and when the feedback of the student audience was returned, which may have reduced the effectiveness of the assignment in raising awareness of writing for an audience. Student evaluations of the impact of this writing assignment and the subsequent evaluation exercise indicated some success in improving students’ ability to evaluate scientific writing, but their exposure to this publication apparently did not stimulate increased interest in soil science or in additional interchange with advanced students through formal ...

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