2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Board 323: Investigating Engineering Undergraduates’ Writing Transfer from Two First-Year Writing-Intensive Sites to Introductory Engineering Labs

Presented at NSF Grantees Poster Session

Transfer of learning theory explains how learners can apply their previously acquired knowledge and skills in a new situation or context. In the context of writing transfer and lab report writing, first-year writing courses can act as one kind of previous learning experience or as a transfer source, and lower-division engineering labs can be the new situation or the transfer target. This preliminary study investigates how engineering students’ prior writing experience affects their lab report writing in lower-division introductory engineering labs. This study uses two distinct sites of first-year writing-intensive courses: one rhetorically-focused and one literature/philosophy-focused. We collected student samples (n = 9) from three universities offering these two distinct sites and approaches. We compared the content, outcomes, and writing expectations of the first-year writing-intensive courses offered by the three schools. Next, we conducted a rhetorical analysis of research papers collected from the writing-intensive course samples to identify each site's writing knowledge and skills. The same analysis was applied to the student’s first lab reports collected from the introductory engineering lab courses. We then compared the writing knowledge and skills between the first-year writing-intensive course samples and the engineering lab report samples to investigate how learning transfer occurred in the student writing at these three different sites. The criteria used to conduct the rhetorical analysis of writing samples focuses on writing outcomes most relevant to engineering lab report writing (relating to audience awareness, organizational structures, presentation/analysis/interpretation of lab data, use of primary and secondary sources, and document style design). We identify the prior writing knowledge and skills of the two distinct first-year writing-intensive course sites by investigating obvious points of productive transfer. This study provides a better understanding of how undergraduates use writing knowledge and skills earned from varying first-year writing-intensive contexts when writing their engineering labs.

Authors

Dr. Franny Howes http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2336-1071 Oregon Institute of Technology [biography]

Franny Howes (e/em/eirs) is an associate professor in the Department of Communication at the Oregon Institute of Technology (Oregon Tech), where e serves as chair and teaches technical writing and digital media courses. E received eir PhD in Rhetoric and Writing from Virginia Tech, a MA in Digital Rhetoric and Professional Writing from Michigan State University, and a BA in Social Relations from James Madison College at Michigan State University. Dr. Howes studies communicating with comics, gender-neutral pronouns, writing in engineering, disability graphic memoir praxis, social entrepreneurship, and contemporary diversity and equity models in higher education. E also conducts collaborative research and development with eir students on educational game and app design learning experiences.
Wendy Michelle Olson Washington State University, Vancouver [biography]

Wendy Olson is an Associate Professor of English at Washington State University Vancouver, where she serves as the Director of Composition and Writing Assessment. Her current research focuses on writing transfer, writing in the disciplines, and writing pr
Dr. Dave Kim http://orcid.org/https://0000-0003-1640-9030 Washington State University, Vancouver [biography]

Dr. Dave Kim is Professor and Mechanical Engineering Program Coordinator in the School of Engineering and Computer Science at Washington State University Vancouver. His teaching and research have been in the areas of engineering materials, fracture mechanics, and manufacturing processes. In particular, he has been very active in pedagogical research in the area of writing pedagogy in engineering laboratory courses. Dr. Kim and his collaborators attracted close to $1M in research grants to study writing transfer of engineering undergraduates. For technical research, he has a long-standing involvement in research concerned with the manufacturing of advanced composite materials (CFRP/titanium stack, GFRP, nanocomposites, etc.) for marine and aerospace applications. His recent research efforts have also included the fatigue behavior of manufactured products, with a focus on fatigue strength improvement of aerospace, automotive, and rail structures. He has been the author or co-author of over 200 peer-reviewed papers in these areas.

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