Promoting Advanced Writing Skills in an Upper‐Level Engineering Class

Yalvaç, Buğrahan; Smith, Harry L.; Troy, John B.; Hirsch, Penny L.

doi:10.1002/j.2168-9830.2007.tb00922.x

Cited by 77 publications

(60 citation statements)

References 10 publications

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“…Yalvac, et al also report a need to focus on "visual thinking" in writing, though some of the issues they uncovered in their study were different than those found here. 6 The second area where the students failed to meet expectations was in providing feedback on appropriate citations to outside resources. This appears to be a consequence of the word choice in the prompt regarding this on the feedback form.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Implementing and Evaluating a Peer Review of Writing Exercise in a First-year Design Project

Harper

2015 ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition Proceedings

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Context and RationaleAs part of a 10-week "cornerstone" design project in the second semester of Ohio State's firstyear honors engineering sequence, student teams must submit a complete documentation package, including a thorough technical report. During the approximately twenty-year history of the program, teams have submitted drafts of each half of the report earlier in the term for feedback. This recursive approach is in line with recommended best practices in writing.1-2 In spite of the heavy emphasis on technical writing in the prior semester, these drafts were often disappointing and time-consuming to grade. Also, it sometimes seemed that feedback on the first half draft had little impact on the quality of the second half draft; instructors often felt that they were seeing the same problems with the second half draft that they had on the first.Peer review of writing was identified as a possible technique for helping students improve their writing more quickly. Use of peer review has been common in other areas of academia, 3 and is growing in popularity in engineering. 4 It was hoped that through the peer review, the students would address some of the minor writing problems, such as grammatical and typographical errors. It was also hoped that the peer feedback would address other general points that had been emphasized in the first semester of the course sequence, such as making appropriate person and voice choices. Further, two areas where past drafts had consistently been identified as lacking were in the appropriate citations for relevant sources and the clear incorporation of figures (in terms of selection, placement, and in-text references). If the students were effective in addressing these issues, it would allow the instructional staff to focus their feedback on larger communication issues, such as content, audience awareness, and flow. This study appears to be unique when compared to the existing literature, in that it examines peer review focused on team writing in a first-year engineering course. Design and Implementation of the AssignmentFor the peer review exercise, teams were instructed to write a high-quality draft of the first two sections of their report (the introduction and description of initially brainstormed ideas). They then turned in four copies of the report. These copies were distributed to four different teams in their class. Each of the four members on a given team received a different report for which to provide feedback. They were encouraged to write directly on the draft and were also given a feedback form to complete. The questions on the feedback form are shown in Figure 1 The exercise was structured such that each member of a team (typically composed of four students) reviewed a different team's draft, so they could see how several other groups approached starting their reports. After the team members completed the reviews of their classmates' work, but before they received feedback on their own, they engaged in a reflective discussion, prompted by a handout. Suggested quest...

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Implementing and Evaluating a Peer Review of Writing Exercise in a First-year Design Project

Harper

2015 ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition Proceedings

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“…For this purpose, numerous projects were set [6,9,12,13,18,25,26] An in-depth and longitudinal study conducted at an NSF funded Engineering Research Center showed that university faculty are persistent to change their teaching approaches no matter they had attended numerous professional development activities over couple years [11]. Faculty who reported dramatic changes in their teaching approaches were the ones who worked in collaboration with the learning scientists and systematically designed their own evidence based instruction in their own classrooms; collected data from their students with the help of the learning scientists, and published their educational design study results in journals or presented at educational conferences.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cultivating Evidence-Based Pedagogies in STEM Education

Yalvaç¹,

Ketsetzi²,

Peng³

et al.

2017 ASEE Annual Conference &Amp; Exposition Proceedings

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little understood question that has motivated her program of research is: How can we effectively and efficiently promote cyberlearning in complex knowledge domains such as STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics)? Towards this direction, she (1) investigates the development of higher-order thinking and complex problem-solving competencies following a comprehensive framework that includes cognition, metacognition, cognitive regulation, motivation, emotion, and epistemic beliefs; (2) develops innovative assessment methods that can benchmark progress of learning and the development of complex problem-solving competencies; (3) develops new and effective approaches to design state-of-the-art digital learning environments (such as intelligent tutoring, system dynamics modeling, simulations, virtual reality, and digital games) to facilitate complex problem-solving competencies; and (4) investigates effective ways to prepare teachers and administrators for digital transformation of education to support effective integration and seamless adoption of advanced learning technologies into education. In addition to her work focusing on STEM learning in K-20 educational settings, her research was also carried out in professional contexts including army, aircraft maintenance, air-traffic control, emergency response, environmental sciences, climate change, medical education, instructional design, architecture, construction science, mechanical engineering, industrial engineering, and systems engineering. Cultivating Evidence-Based Pedagogies in STEM Education AbstractIn this paper, we report the findings of a study that explored the changes in STEM faculty's approaches to teaching and understanding of student learning because of their participation in an ongoing STEM education project. This three-year project is funded by the department of education and aimed at cultivating evidence-based pedagogies in STEM undergraduate education at an Historically Black College and University (HBCU) in US. Four STEM faculty members who were the study participants designed evidence-based instructional strategies that were learner-centered and student-focused. The faculty implemented these strategies in their undergraduate courses and systematically collected data from their students to capture the impact of the newly implemented strategies on students' learning outcomes and experiences. With consultation from the learning scientists of the project, the faculty analyzed the student data collected and reported the findings of their research studies. In the following semester, the faculty participants iterated their design efforts. Participants' approaches to teaching and understanding of student learning were captured prior to the project activities and one year after their participation in the project activities. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected. Analyses revealed that faculty have improved their teaching approaches from a knowledge-centered and teacher-focused orientation to a learner-centered and student-foc...

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“…Furthermore, engineering faculty often reinforce an academic orientation; for example, some suggest making writing more meaningful for students by asking them to take on the "professional role" of a graduate student in a research laboratory. 3 In sum, few university programs place practitioner concerns with writing at the same level they place practitioner concerns with technical skills.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Students Writing for Professional Practice: A Model for Collaboration Among Faculty, Practitioners, and Writing Specialists

Conrad¹,

Kitch²,

Pfeiffer³

et al.

2015 ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition Proceedings

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This paper presents the principles, procedures, materials, and assessment of a new approach to improve the teaching of writing in engineering. The Civil Engineering Writing Project aims to improve students' preparation for writing in industry by developing new teaching materials that can be integrated into existing civil engineering courses. With collaboration among engineering practitioners, applied linguists, and engineering faculty at four universities, the project draws on multiple perspectives to analyze writing and develop teaching materials. Phase 1 of the project investigated differences between practitioner and student writing in a large collection of texts and identified the most serious student weaknesses. Phase 2 of the project, currently underway, develops materials to address those weaknesses and evaluates their effectiveness. Student writing after the use of the materials is assessed with multiple measures, including linguistic analysis of specific language features and holistic evaluation of effectiveness by engineering practitioners. After initial piloting with seven courses, all quantitative assessments have found significant improvement in student writing. Student comments suggest the materials also challenge their misconceptions about writing in engineering. Although the project focuses on civil engineering, the principles behind the project and the procedures for materials development and assessment are applicable to any engineering discipline.

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Promoting Advanced Writing Skills in an Upper‐Level Engineering Class

Cited by 77 publications

References 10 publications

Implementing and Evaluating a Peer Review of Writing Exercise in a First-year Design Project

Implementing and Evaluating a Peer Review of Writing Exercise in a First-year Design Project

Cultivating Evidence-Based Pedagogies in STEM Education

Students Writing for Professional Practice: A Model for Collaboration Among Faculty, Practitioners, and Writing Specialists

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