The act of writing is proven to enhance students' engagement in learning. At Washington State University (WSU), writing skills are identified as an instructional priority. The institution has three writing proficiency requirements for graduation: a first-year composition course, a junior writing portfolio (JWP), and two writing-in-the-major courses. Based upon the scores of JWP (n = 233), we find that our engineering students still struggle to learn the conventions and expectations for writing within the discipline-a common dilemma that other engineering programs face, too. Over the past two years, we conducted an interdisciplinary research effort to improve engineering students' writing skills in two entry-level engineering laboratory courses on engineering materials and manufacturing processes. These lab courses adjusted the view of writing instruction from a traditional modes-based approach to a rhetorical approach, an approach that has been successful in other general education courses. In practice, the course instructor and laboratory adjuncts provided a rhetorical writing review session in the beginning of the semester and graded students' lab reports to provide feedback during the one-on-one sessions. Based on the data collected from multiple years, students' writing quality and their assessment scores were found to improve. This case study of student writing in an engineering material laboratory course was conducted to study the effect of various pedagogical tools on students' lab report scores and their perspectives on writing. Data collected in student surveys and a focus group show that students found one-on-one sessions reinforced their learning from first-year composition courses, identified the expectations of the lab report as a genre, and developed their understanding of the rhetorical features of writing in the discipline of engineering.
Adesope is an Associate Professor of Educational Psychology at Washington State University, Pullman. His research is at the intersection of educational psychology, learning sciences, and instructional design and technology. His recent research focuses on the cognitive and pedagogical underpinnings of learning with computer-based multimedia resources; knowledge representation through interactive concept maps; meta-analysis of empirical research, and investigation of instructional principles and assessments in STEM.c American Society for Engineering Education, 2017 1
Professional development workshop to promote writing transfer between first year composition and introductory engineering laboratory courses AbstractEngineering Programs and the Writing Assessment Center of Washington State University Vancouver conducted a 4 day summer professional development workshop for a group (n=12) of faculty and graduate teaching assistants, who instruct first-year composition and introductory engineering laboratory courses. This professional workshop was designed to provide professional development on rhetoric and writing transfer, to build community of practice among instructors from English and engineering to share a passion for engineering students' writing, and to complete the writing transfer module draft so the participants can use them in the academic year of 2016-2017. The workshop contents consisted of three parts, which include 1) rhetorical writing review and rubric development for students' first-year composition course research papers and engineering lab reports, 2) student writing assessment using the developed rubric both collaboratively and individually, and 3) the instructional materials development to implement writing for transfer into the participants' courses. The external evaluation team collected data at the beginning and end of the 4-day workshop as well as at the end of every day of the workshop in order to accurately assess the development on a day to day basis as well as the overall impact of the workshop. Through days one, two, and three the level of agreement steadily increased for both disciplinary groups (English and engineering) with participants reporting in the post survey that they strongly agreed or agreed that they had learned rhetorical elements and writing pedagogy.
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