Topic Development in the Freshman Engineering Paper: Finding a Focus

Abstract

Topic development and focus are relatively neglected areas of the student research process. This study examined how students in a freshman engineering writing class developed initial research paper topics into focused thesis statements. A mixed methods approach was used, incorporating online surveys, qualitative interviews, and a rubric to track topic development and assess thesis statement focus. The survey results and student comments indicated that participants were more competent at the mechanics of finding sources and writing than at developing appropriately scoped thesis statements. Closer collaboration between writing instructors and librarians is urged to more effectively support and scaffold topic development.

Chapter 8. No Such Thing as a Bad Question: Using Rubrics to Help Students Learn from and Strengthen Failed Research Questions

“…These discussions led to the development of specific criteria that could be used to evaluate the debatability, researchability, and feasibility of students' research questions, and two separate norming sessions were conducted for each rubric. However, like Rinto et al (2016) and Eckel (2019), the authors were unable to achieve sufficient interrater reliability with the initial rubrics.…”

“…Question formulation has been addressed in information literacy scholarship but usually in reference to topic formation (Bodi 2002;Eckel 2019;Lundstrom and Shrode 2013;Rinto, Bowles-Terry, and Santos 2016) rather than the formation of research questions. For instance, Bodi (2002) wrote about ways to assist students in narrowing their topics through asking a series of questions, and Eckel (2019) examined how students choose topics and analyzed their thesis statements in their papers. In both of these studies, question formation was explored as an additional or alternative way to approach the topic narrowing process, not as an essential preliminary research skill.…”

“…Furthermore, they found most students were at the developing stage for arguability, an outcome they found satisfactory, noting that "students need a great deal of time to fully engage with a topic before they have the necessary knowledge to fully enter into a scholarly conversation and make a persuasive claim" (Rinto et al 2016, 760). In a similar study, Eckel (2019) refined the rubric used by Rinto et al (2016) and used it to evaluate the topics of first-year engineering students. Eckel's students also struggled with topic breadth and, like the previous study, scored in the beginning or developing stages for arguability.…”

“…Although rubrics can provide reliable assessment results, reliability is not inherent within all rubrics but instead results from careful development of rubric criteria and intensive user training. Both Rinto et al (2016) and Eckel (2019), for instance, reported that they were unable to achieve sufficient interrater reliability using the rubrics they developed in their studies. Although alternative methods can be used to resolve scoring discrepancies such as the "tertium quid" method used by Rinto et al (2016) in which every response is scored by two raters and then discrepancies are resolved by a third rater, studies like these highlight the need for intensive work in both the development of rubric criteria and user norming before a rubric can be effectively utilized.…”

Confronting Failure: Building Confidence and Resilience in Undergraduate Researchers

“…Question formulation has been addressed in information literacy scholarship but usually in reference to topic formation (Bodi 2002;Eckel 2019;Lundstrom and Shrode 2013;Rinto, Bowles-Terry, and Santos 2016) rather than the formation of research questions. For instance, Bodi (2002) wrote about ways to assist students in narrowing their topics through asking a series of questions, and Eckel (2019) examined how students choose topics and analyzed their thesis statements in their papers.…”