Just Beginning

In the initial stages here, I have some broad concepts that seem to be calling for some pre-research to give me better focus. Primary among those are ways students learn or think, and/or learning styles.

For example, in several of my writing assignments I purposely provide vague directions to the students to allow them a little leeway in their work, and to let them use their creativity. The engineering majors are troubled by this. They want to know single or double-spaced? how large are the margins? do they need a cover page? etc.

Their response always leads me to wonder whether providing those details would be more supportive to them. If my specifying the margins and the font style could allow them to better concentrate on practicing effective writing.

After teaching Technical Writing for several semesters, in which many of my students have been engineering majors, I am curious as to whether students in different majors - ranging from the sciences to the humanities - who think and learn differently, would benefit from a teacher using different methodologies to teach writing.

Perhaps different methods better reach different students, who are more comfortable employing certain ways of thinking or learning or writing. Kris is suggesting to examine what role learning style inventories play in this, which sounds interesting - and also helps provide a quantitative aspect to the research.