Bridging Rhetoric and Engineering (IPCC)
“Bridging Rhetoric and Engineering: Qualitative Results from a Writing Center Program to Improve Engineering Undergraduate Writing,” Proceedings from IEEE ProComm, 2024. Pittsburgh, PA (July 14-17, 2024). I delivered this co-authored conference paper at the IEEE ProComm conference. See the link for the paper.
PTF chair D'Arcy Randall delivered this co-authored paper at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) annual International Conference on Professional Communication (IPCC) in July 2024. This paper explored the results of a bridging program at UT Austin between the Cockrell School of Engineering and the University Writing Center.
Read the complete paper <here,> view the presentation slides here, or find the abstract below.
The lengthy laboratory reports required by upper-division engineering courses typically challenge undergraduates, who may find themselves unprepared to exercise both technical and writing skills together. This paper draws from the results of a multidisciplinary collaboration that trains Writing Center consultants in engineering writing skills. We built on research in "writing transfer" and STEM students, and we engaged in a debate in Writing Center literature over the value of specialist vs. non-specialist consultants. Here, we focus on one intervention in Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE). Students and consultants received training aligned with classroom teaching for a technical writing assignment. Then, students worked with trained consultants on a draft of their assignment. In addition to completing a quantitative analysis of improvements in student self-efficacy and writing in the intervention, our team collected student responses about the students ’ prior backgrounds in technical writing and their experiences working with the Writing Center consultants. Student comments were used for our qualitative data. This qualitative study discusses the results of our open-coding and concept-driven analyses of written comments by the ECE students. Including student voices in our evaluation offered insights into the students ’ positive experiences bridging academic disciplines with a trained consultant.
D. Randall and H. You, "Bridging Rhetoric and Engineering: Qualitative Results from a Writing Center Program to Improve Engineering Undergraduate Writing," 2024 IEEE International Professional Communication Conference (ProComm), Pittsburgh, PA, USA, 2024, pp. 145-152, doi: 10.1109/ProComm61427.2024.00034.
Related Initiatives
Engineering Sentences: A Cross-Disciplinary Training Program
Although Cockrell School of Engineering (CSE) undergraduates take a required engineering writing class, which I teach for Chemical Engineering, they typically struggle with writing laboratory and long-form research reports. Helping CSE students to overcome this obstacle matters because writing technical reports prepares engineering students for the writing-intensive work of a professional engineer. Faculty teaching these classes would also benefit from higher quality student work.