A Longitudinal Study of the Integration of Writing Support in a Multi-Semester Senior Capstone Course

Ruth Camille Pflueger; Jonathan Alan Meckley

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Conference: 2022 ASEE - North Central Section Conference
Location: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Publication Date: March 18, 2022
Start Date: March 18, 2022
End Date: April 4, 2022
Page Count: 13
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--39226
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/39226
Download Count: 536

Paper Authors

biography

Ruth Camille Pflueger Pennsylvania State University, Behrend College orcid.org/0000-0003-1104-2006

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Ruth Pflueger has been the director of the Learning Resource Center at Penn State Behrend for 20 years, where she is also an affiliate instructor of English. She has been involved in a number of federal grants, including two NSF STEM grants, an EU-Atlantis grant, and is currently PI for an NSF IUSE-EHR collaborative grant.

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biography

Jonathan Alan Meckley Pennsylvania State University, Behrend College

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Jonathan Meckley has been the Chair of the Plastics Engineering Technology program at The Pennsylvania State University at Erie, The Behrend College (PSB) for 10 years. He is now the Program Coordinator. He has been teaching full-time since 1999 and part-time since 1990. In 2008 he was promoted to Associate Professor. Mr. Meckley has been a firm believer in the need for better writing for engineering and won “Best Paper in the Injection Molding Division” for the Society of Plastics Engineers Annual Technical Conference in 2008.

During his time at Penn State, he has been involved with Senior Project teams and advised on their papers. One of his goals with his lab courses was to increase the quality of lab reports with a focus on explaining why the results are happening. When the program created the new Senior Project format, the guidelines for writing came from the lab course and modified to fit the content for a project.

Several years ago, he was sending his students over the writing tutors so they could improve their writing and turn in a report that was easily readable. While there was some improvement, the reports still were not easily readable. Dr. Weissbach and Ms. Pflueger were working on training a group of writing tutors to improve the writing tutor experience. He trained his first group of tutors and sent students to them for report improvement. While it was an improvement, refinement of the tutor training was needed. Over the course of several years, the method did produce good student interaction and better reports from the students.

He will be responsible for the tutor training at PSB. He will also assist with research instruments, data collection, and assessment activities.

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Abstract

ABET lists the ability to communicate in writing to both technical and non-technical audiences as a required outcome for baccalaureate engineering students [1]. From emails and memos to formal reports, the ability to communicate is vital to the engineering profession. This Work in Progress paper describes research being done as part of an NSF-funded project, Writing Assignment Tutor Training in STEM (WATTS). The method is designed to improve feedback writing tutors without technical backgrounds give to engineering students on technical reports.

Students in engineering programs have few opportunities to develop their writing skills. Usually, composition courses are part of the general education curriculum. Students often see these courses as unrelated to their majors and careers [2]. Ideally, writing support should be integrated throughout a program. Since WATTs capitalizes on existing resources and requires only a modest amount of faculty time, it could enable engineering programs to provide additional writing support to students in multiple courses and provide a bridge for them to see the connection between writing concepts learned in composition courses and their technical reports.

WATTS was developed in a junior-level circuit analysis course, where students were completing the same lab and writing individual reports. This paper focuses on a senior capstone course that utilizes concepts taught in previous courses to prepare students to complete an independent team research or design project. Projects are unique, usually based on the needs of an industrial sponsor, and are completed over three consecutive semesters. Each semester, teams write a report based on their activities during that semester, with a comprehensive report in the final semester.

The multi-semester nature of the senior design project provides an opportunity for the researchers to chart longitudinal changes from the first to the students’ third semester interactions with the writing tutors, assessing the value of an integrated approach. The program’s impact on students’ attitudes toward revision and the value of tutoring, as well as the impact on tutors, are part of the assessment plan. The program hopes to change the students’ focus from simply presenting their results to communicating them.

The goals of the project are to demonstrate to students that revision is essential to the writing process and that feedback can improve their written communication abilities. The expectation is that after graduation they will continue to seek critical feedback as part of their career growth. Surveys given to both students and tutors revealed that the sessions were taken seriously by the students and that meaningful collaboration was achieved between them. An evaluation of the writing in pre-tutored to final submitted report shows statistically significant improvement. Preliminary and current results will be included within the paper.

[1] Criteria for Accrediting Engineering Technology Programs, ABET, Baltimore, MD., 2020, p.5, ETAC Criteria (abet.org)

[2] Bergmann, L. S. and Zepernick, J., “Disciplinarity and Transfer: Students’ Perceptions of Learning to Write,” Writing Program Administration, 31, Fall/Winter 2007.

Citation
Format

Pflueger, R. C., & Meckley, J. A. (2022, March), A Longitudinal Study of the Integration of Writing Support in a Multi-Semester Senior Capstone Course Paper presented at 2022 ASEE - North Central Section Conference, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. 10.18260/1-2--39226

TY - CPAPER
AB - ABET lists the ability to communicate in writing to both technical and non-technical audiences as a required outcome for baccalaureate engineering students [1]. From emails and memos to formal reports, the ability to communicate is vital to the engineering profession. This Work in Progress paper describes research being done as part of an NSF-funded project, Writing Assignment Tutor Training in STEM (WATTS). The method is designed to improve feedback writing tutors without technical backgrounds give to engineering students on technical reports.

Students in engineering programs have few opportunities to develop their writing skills. Usually, composition courses are part of the general education curriculum. Students often see these courses as unrelated to their majors and careers [2]. Ideally, writing support should be integrated throughout a program. Since WATTs capitalizes on existing resources and requires only a modest amount of faculty time, it could enable engineering programs to provide additional writing support to students in multiple courses and provide a bridge for them to see the connection between writing concepts learned in composition courses and their technical reports.

WATTS was developed in a junior-level circuit analysis course, where students were completing the same lab and writing individual reports. This paper focuses on a senior capstone course that utilizes concepts taught in previous courses to prepare students to complete an independent team research or design project. Projects are unique, usually based on the needs of an industrial sponsor, and are completed over three consecutive semesters. Each semester, teams write a report based on their activities during that semester, with a comprehensive report in the final semester.

The multi-semester nature of the senior design project provides an opportunity for the researchers to chart longitudinal changes from the first to the students’ third semester interactions with the writing tutors, assessing the value of an integrated approach. The program’s impact on students’ attitudes toward revision and the value of tutoring, as well as the impact on tutors, are part of the assessment plan. The program hopes to change the students’ focus from simply presenting their results to communicating them.

The goals of the project are to demonstrate to students that revision is essential to the writing process and that feedback can improve their written communication abilities. The expectation is that after graduation they will continue to seek critical feedback as part of their career growth. Surveys given to both students and tutors revealed that the sessions were taken seriously by the students and that meaningful collaboration was achieved between them. An evaluation of the writing in pre-tutored to final submitted report shows statistically significant improvement. Preliminary and current results will be included within the paper.

[1] Criteria for Accrediting Engineering Technology Programs, ABET, Baltimore, MD., 2020, p.5, ETAC Criteria (abet.org)

[2] Bergmann, L. S. and Zepernick, J., “Disciplinarity and Transfer: Students’ Perceptions of Learning to Write,” Writing Program Administration, 31, Fall/Winter 2007.

AU - Ruth Camille Pflueger
AU - Jonathan Alan Meckley
CY - Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
DA - 2022/03/18
PB - ASEE Conferences
TI - A Longitudinal Study of the Integration of Writing Support in a Multi-Semester Senior Capstone Course
UR - https://peer.asee.org/39226
DO - 10.18260/1-2--39226
ER -