Faculty discussion on the third writing course requirement

The College's Core Committee is looking at possible ways of improving the writing skills of all engineering students. One part of this was to explore possible ways that the third writing "course" (which is not actually a separate course but is incorporated into CSE 560) could be strengthened.

The Core Commmittee proposed considering the following possibilities:

1. Establish a faculty and TA training workshop for evaluation of writing in engineering courses. The purpose would be to give faculty and TA's tools and procedures for effective use of writing assignments in engineering courses. The workshop would potentially be staffed and organized by the Technical Communications Resource Center.
2. Increase the amount of peer review of student's writing within major courses especially the 3rd Writing Course.
3. Increase the number of Engineering 367 (GEC second writing requirement) classes and/or make it more engineering oriented.
4. Cluster English 110 classes so that engineering and MAPS students are in the same sections.
5. Create a Professional Writing for Engineers course within the college.

Neelam (the CSE rep on the Core Committee) asked for comments from CSE faculty on these ideas. Here is a summary of the responses from the CSE faculty:

• Until someone spends resources to measure the quantity of change [in students' writing skills] over the course of their college careers, I think we are left with doing the best we can with the resources we have.
  In CSE 560 there is much practice in writing because much writing is necessary for completing the documentation in the projects. There is also presentation of writing advice given in two full lectures (out of a total of thirty-seven). If teams are serious about high marks on their projects, then they perform peer review of the writing, but this is a teams' choice. How much of an effect does all this have on our students' writing skills? We won't know unless and until we measure it. Could we do more? Yes, but only at the expense of some of the many other objectives packed into CSE 560. ... By themselves, college-wide exit surveys indicating lacking communication skills don't convince me one way or another about the effectiveness of a particular third writing course. ...

• Help provided to the students as they do the work is most valuable. My comments are from that perspective.
  [1] is a good idea. Especially if the resources can be employed during the conduct of the course.
  For [2], what is meant by peer review? Students reviewing each other's work? That's of value, but limited.
  I'd like to develop a pool of resources (graders/TAs) trained/ experienced in the various skills needed to help students in 560 - such as testing, analysis and design, technical writing.
  [3] [4], [5] are good ideas.

• I [like] having the 3rd writing course as part of the student's technical discipline (rather than some disconnected course offered by Dept of English or college of communication...). However, I've often felt that Engineering faculty are under-qualified to teach effective writing.
  [1] seems to be aimed at addressing this concern. But it may fall short. Certainly a workshop can be helpful ... but it's not really a qualification to teach the topic at a college level.
  So, I would like to see more direct involvement from the people who really are the experts. We have the advantage at OSU of actually having (presumably!) that resource on campus. Maybe it's the Dept. of English, maybe not, but someone has to know more than engineers on how to teach this topic effectively!
  Perhaps one form of direct involvement would be simply hiring TAs from that area to help with our courses.

• I suggest checking if other engineering colleges are having success with writing skills. Second, I suggest meeting with faculty in English who are experts in teaching/developing writing skills, explain what seems to be the weaknesses with engineering students, and ask for their advice. Without doing such things, how can we make intelligent decisions about these questions? For example, surely there is a world of literature on the use of peer reviews in developing writing skills. Finally, it seems to me that being able to write effectively is a high level intellectual activity, and if we want to see our undergrads do it well, then we will need to make a strong commitment to accomplishing that objective. It will take a lot of instructor/student time and dedication.