Redesigning Writing Instruction Within a Lab-Based Civil Engineering Course: Reporting on the Evolution Across Several Semesters
- Conference
- Location
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Minneapolis, MN
- Publication Date
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August 23, 2022
- Start Date
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June 26, 2022
- End Date
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June 29, 2022
- Conference Session
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Civil Engineering Division - Huh? What Did You Say? What Does That Mean?
- Page Count
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16
- DOI
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10.18260/1-2--41443
- Permanent URL
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https://peer.asee.org/41443
- Download Count
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310
Paper Authors
Mia L Renna University of Illinois at Urbana - Champaign
Renna is a PhD Civil Engineering student at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign primarily interested in natural disaster mitigation engineering policy. She is part of an interdisciplinary team that focuses on helping STEM instructors integrate writing into their courses. Renna obtained her B.S. from Clemson University and her M.S. from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Renna is a 2021 Tilman Scholar awardee and has earned professional certifications in Project Management Professional, Lean Six-Sigma Green Belt, and LEED Green Associate. Renna is a military veteran who served honorably in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers as an engineering officer for over 8 years.
Rebecca Avgoustopoulos University of Illinois at Urbana - Champaign
Rebecca Avgoustopoulos is a PhD student in Writing Studies at the University of Illinois. She has taught First-Year Writing and Business Writing, and is currently focused on pursuing her research interests in writing across disciplines. She works with faculty to integrate writing into their STEM-oriented classrooms and to evaluate its influence on student learning.
Ryan Ware
Karthik Pattaje Sooryanarayana University of Illinois at Urbana - Champaign
Karthik Pattaje is a Ph.D. candidate in Civil Engineering (Construction Materials) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. His research interests include concrete rheology and 3D printing. He has been involved in teaching and redesigning a laboratory course to improve the technical writing skills of undergraduate STEM students.
John S Popovics University of Illinois at Urbana - Champaign
John Popovics is a Professor, Associate Head, and Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Civil & Environmental Engineering Department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His interests include writing instruction for engineering students.
Julie L Zilles University of Illinois at Urbana - Champaign
Dr. Zilles is a Research Associate Professor in the Department of Crop Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign. She received her B.S. in biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and her Ph.D. in Bacteriology from the University of Wisconsin Madison. In addition to research at the intersection of microbiology, agriculture, and environmental engineering, she leads the transdisciplinary Writing Across Engineering and Science (WAES) team, which is focused on promoting and adapting best practices from writing studies for STEM classes and curricula.
Abstract
Development of effective communication skills in engineering students is critical, yet challenging. As engineering programs are technically rigorous, work-intensive, and challenged by their high enrollment numbers, methods to improve students’ writing skills must be costeffective and scalable. This paper describes pedagogical changes and shares course materials designed to integrate core concepts from writing studies into an advanced laboratory-based civil engineering course. We incorporate language units developed by the Civil Engineering Writing Project that provide strong connections to professional engineers’ writing. Specific concepts that guided the redesign are genre awareness and flexibility, process orientation to writing, and global, prioritized feedback. Several semesters into the iterative implementation of these changes, teaching assistants observe greater student engagement, without an increase in teaching workload.
Renna, M. L., & Avgoustopoulos, R., & Ware, R., & Pattaje Sooryanarayana, K., & Popovics, J. S., & Zilles, J. L. (2022, August), Redesigning Writing Instruction Within a Lab-Based Civil Engineering Course: Reporting on the Evolution Across Several Semesters Paper presented at 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Minneapolis, MN. 10.18260/1-2--41443
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