An official website of the United States government
In an earlier work, the authors compared the writing style of Mechanical Engineering Technology (MET) students in an “untutored” state to the writing style of “tutored” students, where the tutoring was provided by “generic” writing center tutors. The results of this study showed that aside from changes in the diction of the students’ work, there was little measurable improvement in the quality of student writing as measured by both the AAC&U VALUE Rubric and by the authors’ voice-development-style-diction method. The current work builds on the results of the previous work by providing training on a just-in-time basis for the writing center tutors. As with previous years, the students participating in the study were MET students in a last-semester capstone industrial design course. This course is organized around a series of open-ended industry-sponsored projects for which the students are expected to develop a solution to a mechanical engineering problem. The students work on the projects in teams of three or four students and complete the work over a two-semester sequence offered annually on a fall-spring basis. The assignment in the study was identical to that of previous years: an “analysis” report in which students are expected to apply content from previous courses to one aspect of the industry-sponsored design project. The present study will compare the results from three iterations of the study: the work of “untutored” students, i.e. those who did not received any writing center assistance whatsoever, those who tutored by “generic” writing center tutors, and lastly, the works of those tutored by tutors specifically trained in support of the specific intervention. In the two cases where tutor interaction occurred, it was required as a component of the course to ensure participation by the entire student cohort. In general, the interactions with the specially-trained tutors produced works with a more mature writing style on the part of the student as compared to those works produced by students who had interacted with the untrained tutors or no tutors at all. The work will also discuss survey data collected on the “generic” and specially-trained tutoring sessions and discuss the differences in the results. Preliminary results show that the specially-trained tutors reported pronounced levels of engagement in the tutoring session, as measured by student note-taking, student questions, student receptiveness to suggestions, and student desire to understand the reasoning behind the tutors’ suggestions. Specially-trained tutors also reported significantly higher levels of student interest suggestions about grammar, style, content, format, and citations. Overall, it is concluded that specific training for the tutors was most associated with increased levels of interaction between tutor and student. As the students in the final group (“trained tutors”) were told prior to the tutoring session that the tutors were “specially trained,” it remains to be determined if the increased interaction was due to better tutor preparation or a higher estimation of the value of the tutoring session on the part of the students receiving the tutoring. This is proposed as an extension to the current work.
more »
« less
Using Writing Center Peer Tutors as a Means to Improve Mechanical Engineering Technology Student Writing
Despite the well-established importance of written communication skills for students in STEM disciplines, the quantitative assessment of STEM writing remains an evolving field. The present work seeks to measure the effectiveness of “generic” writing center tutors on the technical writing skills of senior-level Mechanical Engineering Technology students. A set of nineteen student analysis reports selected from a capstone design course were used as the source of the data. The reports were assessed both before and after a tutoring session using a version of the AAC&U VALUE rubric and a voice-development-style-diction method developed by the authors. By both methods, the improvements in student writing from before the tutoring session to afterwards were marginal at best, with some measures even showing a decrease in performance. The sole exception was that a significant increase in hedging, boosting, and attitude words appeared in the students’ work, indicative of a change in diction. It is concluded that an intervention by a “generically” trained writing center tutor has little effect on the quality of student writing outside of that due to the inclusion of additional adjectives. An intervention by tutors specifically trained using the WATTS methodology is proposed as a means to address this. Such an intervention will be investigated as an extension to the current work.
more »
« less
- Award ID(s):
- 2013496
- PAR ID:
- 10356359
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- ASEE 2022 Annual Conference & Exposition
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
In an earlier work, the authors compared the writing style of Mechanical Engineering Technology (MET) students in an “untutored” state to the writing style of “tutored” students, where the tutoring was provided by “generic” writing center tutors. The results of this study showed that aside from changes in the diction of the students’ work, there was little measurable improvement in the quality of student writing as measured by both the AAC&U VALUE Rubric and by the authors’ voice-development-style-diction method. The current work builds on the results of the previous work by providing training on a just-in-time basis for the writing center tutors. As with previous years, the students participating in the study were MET students in a last-semester capstone industrial design course. This course is organized around a series of open-ended industry-sponsored projects for which the students are expected to develop a solution to a mechanical engineering problem. The students work on the projects in teams of three or four students and complete the work over a two-semester sequence offered annually on a fall-spring basis. The assignment in the study was identical to that of previous years: an “analysis” report in which students are expected to apply content from previous courses to one aspect of the industry-sponsored design project. The present study will compare the results from three iterations of the study: the work of “untutored” students, i.e. those who did not received any writing center assistance whatsoever, those who tutored by “generic” writing center tutors, and lastly, the works of those tutored by tutors specifically trained in support of the specific intervention. In the two cases where tutor interaction occurred, it was required as a component of the course to ensure participation by the entire student cohort. In general, the interactions with the specially-trained tutors produced works with a more mature writing style on the part of the student as compared to those works produced by students who had interacted with the untrained tutors or no tutors at all. The work will also discuss survey data collected on the “generic” and specially-trained tutoring sessions and discuss the differences in the results. Preliminary results show that the specially-trained tutors reported pronounced levels of engagement in the tutoring session, as measured by student note-taking, student questions, student receptiveness to suggestions, and student desire to understand the reasoning behind the tutors’ suggestions. Specially-trained tutors also reported significantly higher levels of student interest suggestions about grammar, style, content, format, and citations. Overall, it is concluded that specific training for the tutors was most associated with increased levels of interaction between tutor and student. As the students in the final group (“trained tutors”) were told prior to the tutoring session that the tutors were “specially trained,” it remains to be determined if the increased interaction was due to better tutor preparation or a higher estimation of the value of the tutoring session on the part of the students receiving the tutoring. This is proposed as an extension to the current work.more » « less
-
Senior capstone projects are usually funded by industrial sponsors that present a project which becomes the focus of the students’ efforts. However, all too often, students concentrate on the application of engineering concepts to the project before accurately identifying the true problem to be solved. The resulting designs address the project goals but ultimately fail to solve or sometime even exacerbate the underlying problem. This paper discusses the results of an investigation of an intervention with the potential to improve students’ identification of the optimal designs to the projects posed by sponsors. The intervention represents an extension of research funded by an I-USE NSF Collaborative grant to improve writing support for engineering students on their technical documents by the use of peer writing tutors from non-technical backgrounds, collaboratively trained by engineering faculty and writing tutor supervisors. The project, Writing Assignment Tutor Training in STEM (WATTS), has been conducted in three universities over three years and has demonstrated statistically significant improvement in STEM undergraduate writing after students received tutoring from WATTS-trained tutors. At the beginning of a WATTS tutoring session, students provide an elevator speech to the tutors, summarizing the content of their reports. The researchers hypothesize that the tutors, as a general audience, are more likely to see the problem from a broader perspective than the students working alone. Also, the students must explain the reasoning behind their identification of the problem. Both of these interactions have the potential to enable the students to improve their critical thinking skills in their discipline. WATTS training materials have been adapted to include this aspect of the content of students’ reports. This study is currently being conducted in the first semester of a two-semester mechanical engineering technology senior design course. Results and analysis will be included in the paper.more » « less
-
Writing Assignment Tutor Training in STEM (WATTS) is part of a three-year NSF IUSE grant with participants at three institutions. This research project seeks to determine to what extent students in the WATTS project show greater writing improvement than students using writing tutors not trained in WATTS. The team collected baseline, control, and experimental data. Baseline data included reports written by engineering and engineering technology students with no intervention to determine if there were variations in written communication related to student demographics and institutions. Control data included reports written by students who visited tutors with no WATTS training, and experimental data included reports written by students who visited tutors who were WATTS-trained. Reports were evaluated by the research team using a slightly modified version of the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) Written Communication VALUE Rubric. Baseline data assessment also provided an opportunity to test the effectiveness of the rubric. This paper presents findings from the analysis of the control and experimental data to determine the impact of WATTS on student writing in lab reports. An aggregate score for each lab report was determined by averaging the reviewer scores. An analysis was run to determine if there was a statistical difference between pre-tutoring lab report scores from the baseline, control, and experimental rubric scores for each criterion and total scores; there was not a statistically significant difference. The research team ran a Wilcoxon signed-rank test to assess the relationship between control and experimental aggregate rubric scores for each criterion. The preliminary analysis of the control and experimental data shows that the WATTS intervention has a positive, statistically significant impact on written communication skills regardless of the campus student demographics. Since WATTS has been shown to be a low-cost, effective intervention to improve engineering and engineering technology students’ written communication skills at these participating campuses, it has potential use for other institutions to positively impact their students’ written communication.more » « less
-
Writing Assignment Tutor Training in STEM (WATTS) is part of a three-year NSF IUSE grant with participants at three institutions. This research project seeks to determine to what extent students in the WATTS project show greater writing improvement than students using writing tutors not trained in WATTS. The team collected baseline, control, and experimental data. Baseline data included reports written by engineering and engineering technology students with no intervention to determine if there were variations in written communication related to student demographics and institutions. Control data included reports written by students who visited tutors with no WATTS training, and experimental data included reports written by students who visited tutors who were WATTS-trained. Reports were evaluated by the research team using a slightly modified version of the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) Written Communication VALUE Rubric. Baseline data assessment also provided an opportunity to test the effectiveness of the rubric. This paper presents findings from the analysis of the control and experimental data to determine the impact of WATTS on student writing in lab reports. An aggregate score for each lab report was determined by averaging the reviewer scores. An analysis was run to determine if there was a statistical difference between pre-tutoring lab report scores from the baseline, control, and experimental rubric scores for each criterion and total scores; there was not a statistically significant difference. The research team ran a Wilcoxon signed-rank test to assess the relationship between control and experimental aggregate rubric scores for each criterion. The preliminary analysis of the control and experimental data shows that the WATTS intervention has a positive, statistically significant impact on written communication skills regardless of the campus student demographics. Since WATTS has been shown to be a low-cost, effective intervention to improve engineering and engineering technology students’ written communication skills at these participating campuses, it has potential use for other institutions to positively impact their students’ written communication.more » « less
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
-
Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- The DOI is not currently available.
