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1. Board 121: Using Tutor-led Support to Enhance Engineering Student Writing for All

   Bodenhamer, J. ; Weissbach, R. ; Pflueger, R. ; Renguette, C. ; Sorge, B. ; Dasgupta, A. ( June 2023 , American Society for Engineering Education)

   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. 

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2. Using Tutor-led Support to Enhance Engineering Student Writing for All.

   Bodenhamer Johanna ; Weissbach Robert ; Pfluenger Ruth ; Renguette Corinne ; Sorge Brandon ; Dasgupta Annwesa ; Edinbarough Immanuel. ( June 2023 , 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition)

   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. 

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3. Comparison of Undergraduate Student Writing in Engineering Disciplines at Campuses with Varying Demographics

   Immanuel Edinbarough, The University ; Jesus Gonzalez, The University ; Ruth Pflueger, Pennsylvania State ; Robert Weissbach, Indiana University ; Johanna Bodenhamer, IUPUI ( August 2022 , [2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition)

   Writing is generally recognized as fundamental to the formation and communication of scientific and technical knowledge to peer groups and general audiences. Often, persuasive writing is an essential attribute emphasized by industries and businesses for a successful career in STEM fields. Nevertheless, the current scenario is that students in STEM fields, with their increased demand for more specialized skills in fewer credit hours combined with a lack of emphasis on writing from engineering faculty members, make addressing this need difficult. In addition, students in engineering fields often do not value writing skills and underestimate the amount of writing they will do in their careers. Hence, it is essential to understand and quantify the level of writing skills STEM students exhibit in their technical courses so that mitigation efforts can be designed using commonly available resources to enhance this important skillset among the students, including university writing centers. A research question was posed to study this aspect of technical writing: How do STEM students at institutions conceive of writing and its role in classroom laboratories? This research was conducted at three different universities with students of varied demographics, including one which is designated as a Hispanic-serving institution, via a sequential mixed-methods design. The demography variation among the institutions includes the level of college preparation among students and the mix of ethnicity to see if there are variations among certain groups. Although the sample size is small, the goal was to establish a methodology and a preliminary outcome set that could be used in further research with larger populations. Research data in the form of reports and surveys, were collected from groups of students from four distinct campuses to ascertain the technical writing capability of each group and provide a comparison to better understand the level of intervention required. The quantitative data was collected throughout the academic year through Likert scale surveys as well as rubric-based evaluation of reports. The research design, methodology, and results of the research findings and the proposed mitigation efforts to improve student writing in STEM fields are presented in the paper. The above research was sponsored by the National Science Foundation grant: Collaborative: Research: Writing Assignment Tutor Training in STEM (WATTS), an Interdisciplinary Approach for the Enhancement of Student Writing in STEM fields. 

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4. Comparison of Undergraduate Student Writing in Engineering Disciplines at Campuses with Varying Demographics

   Edinbarough, Immanuel ; & Gonzalez, Jesus ; Pflueger, Ruth ; Weissbach, Robert ; Bodenhamer, Johanna ( June 2022 , ASEE Annual Conference proceedings)

   Writing is generally recognized as fundamental to the formation and communication of scientific and technical knowledge to peer groups and general audiences. Often, persuasive writing is an essential attribute emphasized by industries and businesses for a successful career in STEM fields. Nevertheless, the current scenario is that students in STEM fields, with their increased demand for more specialized skills in fewer credit hours combined with a lack of emphasis on writing from engineering faculty members, make addressing this need difficult. In addition, students in engineering fields often do not value writing skills and underestimate the amount of writing they will do in their careers. Hence, it is essential to understand and quantify the level of writing skills STEM students exhibit in their technical courses so that mitigation efforts can be designed using commonly available resources to enhance this important skillset among the students, including university writing centers. A research question was posed to study this aspect of technical writing: How do STEM students at institutions conceive of writing and its role in classroom laboratories? This research was conducted at three different universities with students of varied demographics, including one which is designated as a Hispanic-serving institution, via a sequential mixed-methods design. The demography variation among the institutions includes the level of college preparation among students and the mix of ethnicity to see if there are variations among certain groups. Although the sample size is small, the goal was to establish a methodology and a preliminary outcome set that could be used in further research with larger populations. Research data in the form of reports and surveys, were collected from groups of students from four distinct campuses to ascertain the technical writing capability of each group and provide a comparison to better understand the level of intervention required. The quantitative data was collected throughout the academic year through Likert scale surveys as well as rubric-based evaluation of reports. The research design, methodology, and results of the research findings and the proposed mitigation efforts to improve student writing in STEM fields are presented in the paper. The above research was sponsored by the National Science Foundation grant: Collaborative: Research: Writing Assignment Tutor Training in STEM (WATTS), an Interdisciplinary Approach for the Enhancement of Student Writing in STEM fields. 

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5. Comparison of Undergraduate Student Writing in Engineering Disciplines at Campuses with Varying Demographics

   Edinbarough, Immanuel ; Gonzalez, Jesus ; Bodenhamer, Johanna ; Pflueger, Ruth C. ; Weissbach, R. ( August 2022 , ASEE annual conference)

   Writing is generally recognized as fundamental to the formation and communication of scientific and technical knowledge to peer groups and general audiences. Often, persuasive writing is an essential attribute emphasized by industries and businesses for a successful career in STEM fields. Nevertheless, the current scenario is that students in STEM fields, with their increased demand for more specialized skills in fewer credit hours combined with a lack of emphasis on writing from engineering faculty members, make addressing this need difficult. In addition, students in engineering fields often do not value writing skills and underestimate the amount of writing they will do in their careers. Hence, it is essential to understand and quantify the level of writing skills STEM students exhibit in their technical courses so that mitigation efforts can be designed using commonly available resources to enhance this important skillset among the students, including university writing centers. A research question was posed to study this aspect of technical writing: How do STEM students at institutions conceive of writing and its role in classroom laboratories? This research was conducted at three different universities with students of varied demographics, including one which is designated as a Hispanic-serving institution, via a sequential mixed-methods design. The demography variation among the institutions includes the level of college preparation among students and the mix of ethnicity to see if there are variations among certain groups. Although the sample size is small, the goal was to establish a methodology and a preliminary outcome set that could be used in further research with larger populations. Research data in the form of reports and surveys, were collected from groups of students from four distinct campuses to ascertain the technical writing capability of each group and provide a comparison to better understand the level of intervention required. The quantitative data was collected throughout the academic year through Likert scale surveys as well as rubric-based evaluation of reports. The research design, methodology, and results of the research findings and the proposed mitigation efforts to improve student writing in STEM fields are presented in the paper. The above research was sponsored by the National Science Foundation grant: Collaborative: Research: Writing Assignment Tutor Training in STEM (WATTS), an Interdisciplinary Approach for the Enhancement of Student Writing in STEM fields. 

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