2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This Evidence-based Practice paper presents the mixed-methods results of an interdisciplinary program to improve engineering undergraduate writing. Engineering students’ difficulties in learning to write technical documents are all too familiar to engineering educators. Insightful research investigating these difficulties engages rhetorical theories of “writing transfer,” or the ability to draw from prior writing experience to meet new writing challenges or learn new genres. The problem facing educators is how to help students overcome writing transfer challenges when engineering curricula emphasize technical knowledge. Moreover, competing priorities and tight budgets at many academic institutions impede efforts to improve discipline-specific writing instruction. At our large public university, student fees support a writing center dedicated to helping students wrestle with various writing transfer challenges. However, our engineering students have historically neglected its consultants’ expertise. In addition, writing center research reflects controversy over the relative value of specialist vs. non-specialist writing consultants for engineering students. Responding to these problems, our team of engineering writing instructors hypothesized that training the writing center consultants to assist with specific engineering writing assignments could unlock this potential resource. Here, we present the program design and the quantitative and qualitative results from a Fall 2020 intervention in a first-semester Biomedical Engineering (BME) course.

The program design featured (1) modifications made in the intervention class's writing assignment and (2) parallel training sessions in BME writing for writing center consultants. We assessed students’ confidence in their writing skills from self-efficacy surveys gathered pre- and post- the modified assignment. In addition, we evaluated students’ views on the intervention and the course itself from reflection essays requested at the end of the semester. Finally, draft and revised writing samples were collected from both the intervention class and an earlier class used as a control. The writing samples—212 in the intervention; 206 in the control—were assessed and scored for both higher and lower order writing skills. For the quantitative analysis, paired t-tests compared the pre- and post-self-efficacy surveys, and MANCOVA compared the draft and final writing sample scores. For the qualitative analysis, the reflection essays were analyzed for themes. Results for the intervention showed significantly improved self-efficacy scores in assignment content, as well as in higher and lower order writing skills. The more objectively assessed writing samples showed significantly improved scores between the control and intervention, particularly in the categories of paragraph coherence and avoiding mechanical errors. We conclude that non-specialist Writing Center consultants can be trained to help improve undergraduate engineering writing for first-year students.