Three Strategies for Integrating Writing into STEM curricula and other hard-to-reach places: A Workshop for WAC Specialists and Their Allies in STEM and Related Fields

Övrigt konferensbidrag, 2014

STEM disciplines have been difficult for WAC/WID specialists to penetrate. There is also an increasing awareness that general education writing transfers poorly into STEM disciplines; therefore, STEM students need more discipline-specific writing instruction that is provided by specialists in those fields. In this workshop, participants will work through a process that prepares them and STEM specialists to provide both basic and sophisticated writing instruction, assignments, and feedback to students about the genres and rhetorical strategies of their disciplines. The essence of this approach, which grew out of our work with STEM faculty in various fields, is to create scenarios based in realistic workplace situations where professionals must communicate the results of the STEM work the students are performing in class. Following a general overview, the workshop will include five phases. Each phase, will include peer review and general discussion. 1.Participants will learn and apply a heuristic for creating “authentic” assignments for their courses. These are assignments addressed to someone other than the professor who must use the students’ communication in some practical way. 2.Participants will extend the heuristic to create an authentic assignment that is built around a technical assignment they use in their courses in ways that enhance students writing and content knowledge simultaneously. 3.Participants will learn how to use these assignments to teach discipline-specific conventions and rhetorical strategies. 4.Participants will create a second assignment that prepares students for writing the first one or extends skills the students learned while writing the first one. 5.Participants will identify one of the most important writing abilities new graduates should possess in a specific STEM field and plan an assignments in each of two courses that are linked to progressively develop students’ writing abilities toward the program-level writing outcomes. Participant Outcomes 1.Participants will have identified writing abilities expected of graduates. 2.Participants will have created an authentic assignment using a scenario-based heuristic. 3.Participants will have created a second linked to the first. 4.Participants will have begun to develop a plan for progressive and sequenced assignment to build student writing abilities toward a graduation-level outcome.