Wrapping Up...

In trying to wrap things up, I came across several more pieces of related literature that seem to be very appropriate to my research design project. One article concerns the development a writing program to teach writing in order teach engineering literacies. The other article is an explanation of the formation and philosophy of a discipline-centered writing center at an engineering college. From both of these, I have gleaned much more specific information on learning styles of students with engineering majors.

For instance, a major discourse convention for the engineering field is the lab report, which is actually “revered” as a genre for writing. Students often have difficulty learning to write a lab report, but the process they go through – working and discussing with their peers and the instructor - is an example of writing-to-learn. Problem-solving skills, which they enjoy using in their field, are adapted for the writing process. Another interesting observation was the amount of notational and verbal languages that engineering students use in their work. These include designs, compositions of images, diagrams, computer languages, symbols, etc. The articles note that to explain a concept, students often draw while talking. and thus, I believe, visual rhetoric seems to have a place in this study as well. These articles provided a much more enriched picture of the students this research study will focus upon, and definitely will help to round out my hypothesis.

I am very excited to see this project come to fruition, and am looking forward to the semester when I can actually implement this study to confirm whether my suppositions could be true. Thank you to my fellow students who provided such helpful comments and direction for me, as well as Dr. Blair for her interesting course and great encouragement this semester!

Looking at the Research

Looking at a large amount of subject matter for my lit review caused this project to suddenly change direction! I had quite a few sources for Writing Across the Curriculum, but I found that they seemed to be leading me off track since I am focused on certain academic majors instead of all majors. So, I dropped that theme altogether! This did indicate, though, that some further research on Writing in the Disciplines might be beneficial.

Also, I was completely overwhelmed by the amount of books, articles and research on learning styles/preferences. But it provided a good foundation for my knowledge of how my studies should should be set up. Wading through all those articles, I discovered a couple research projects somewhat similar to my own, which were intriguing (including one on engineering students at a university in Israel). Also, I noted a consistent theme in many of the learning styles articles: a call for more empirical research. There also was variation of authors' opinions on whether teachers should try to employ methods in the classroom directed to particular learning styles - or whether students are so "all over the place" that it's not worth it. Interesting...

Following Kris' advice, I ventured into the journals for Scientific and Technical Communication, but so far I only have found very dated studies and materials. There were a number of articles on teaching communication to engineers, but they are from the 1970s and 80s. (Maybe the popularity of the subject wore off?) But I'm still searching.

In their helpful comments on my lit review, Florence and Drea shared my concerns about the other studies having conflicting conclusions on the merits. Does that mean more research is necessary - or the research isn't really valid enough to be determining anything of value? They also suggested that I remember to focus on both pedagogical and theoretical slants in my project.

I feel like I only touched the tip of the iceberg with my research. Just today, I found a fascinating article on setting up a writing center just for engineering students at the University of South Carolina. It definitely seems that should be included!

Starting to Focus

After composing my bibliography, and having it reviewed by Florence and Kris, I am feeling much better about this research project. I think it is starting to take shape.

Florence provided very helpful feedback for my bibliography, and based on her comments, I believe I can add some additional sources to provide a more well-rounded examination of research. I’m looking at narrowing my topic to focusing on teaching writing to engineering students or students with other technical majors, as opposed to teaching writing to students in the humanities/arts majors.

Florence suggested some additional journals and sources, such as WAC journals, and even mentioned a specific WAC bibliography that she created in a previous class which is posted on the R &W website. My materials cover a range of topics including WAC, learning styles, interdisciplinary writing, the use of technology in teaching writing, and strategies for writing pedagogy. There is scarce information on teaching writing specifically to engineering students, so that is a gap in the research. We also both recognized that there is not much of a feminist voice found among these sources (or at least, apparent at this point). However, with about 95 percent of engineering students being male, we were not sure whether that would become a problem.

The journals of Educational Psychology and Community College Journal of Research and Practice, plus a number of papers presented at CCCC conferences seem to be the most fruitful so far. Florence also pointed out the NCTE website with its explanations of positions, including one on WAC, should be helpful. These also are the sources I plan to look at first to learn about the background issues. Additionally, I found some books on Kolb’s learning styles, which I need to familiarize myself with early on in this research project.

Kris' feedback was highly helpful, as she suggested focusing on technical communication journals, such as Journal of Business and Technical Communication or Technical Communication Quarterly. I am hoping a search of these (and similar) publications will focus a little more on the population in question. I find it very interesting that this subject (teaching writing with methodologies based on student disciples) does not seemed to have been addressed in any broad way.

I obtained hard copies of many of the articles this week, and I am finding they are very interesting, especially in dealing with the learning styles/preferences. Overall, I feel good about this project, but I realize I have A LOT to learn!

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.

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