2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Mapping Writing Concepts Across an Undergraduate Physics Curriculum

Presented at Engineering Physics and Physics Division Technical Session

Technical communication is essential for a career in physics, but communication skills are often not explicitly taught in physics undergraduate curricula. As a starting point for curricular integration, we investigated where and how writing is currently occurring in the core undergraduate physics courses at a large, public university. We examined course materials to identify where writing is explicitly or implicitly referenced, categorize the genres that were assigned, and characterize writing concepts that were represented in the course materials. Analyzing course materials allowed us to identify a wide range of activities and assignments related to writing. We observe that implicit references to writing are prevalent, writing activities are weighted toward upper-level classes, and the most common genres are related to laboratory activities. Writing concepts that occur frequently in upper-level laboratory courses correlate to disciplinary values of precision and clarity, while concepts of novelty and evidence are infrequent. This type of assessment can form the basis for discussing where and how writing is showing up in our courses, allowing us to be more deliberate about how our curricula develop students’ communication skills.

Authors

Dr. Patrick Carzon http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8150-9893 Franciscan University of Steubenville [biography]

Dr. Patrick Carzon is an Associate Professor of Physics at Franciscan University and received his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) in July 2023.

His thesis work focused on the Initial State of Heavy-Ion Collisions, specifically, the inclusion of conserved charges. He has also pursued research regarding the development of educational instruction with a focus on the use of writing in undergraduate physics, which he started at UIUC and has continued at Franciscan University.
Ms. Megan Elizabeth Mericle [biography]

Megan Mericle is a PhD student in Writing Studies. She is a member of a research team focused on writing in STEM, where she works with faculty to develop and implement learning objectives for writing in undergraduate science and engineering courses. In he
Jessica Raley University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign [biography]

Jessica Raley is the outreach coordinator for the Illinois Center for Advanced Studies of the Universe (ICASU) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She is also the adviser for the P.O.I.N.T. VR program.
Julie L Zilles http://orcid.org/https://0000-0001-8684-4519 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign [biography]

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.

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