The Writing SySTEM: A Systemic Approach to Graduate Writing Instruction and Intervention

很少有研究生接受持续的、特定学科的STEM写作基础指导，而是依赖于教师顾问的特别支持。这种形式的写作支持可能适用于已经拥有在各自领域成功写作的知识和技能的学生，但它既不是包容性的，也不是最佳实践。此外，如果没有系统的写作支持，那些在STEM领域历来代表性不足的学生或国际学生在研究生课程中尤其面临成功的障碍。对于那些努力区分有效写作的学科特征和导师的特殊期望的学生来说，参与这些现有形式的写作支持可能会令人困惑、沮丧和徒劳。此外，这种写作教学和干预方法不能帮助学生发展自我效能感，即相信他们可以执行特定的任务以达到预期的结果。预计自我效能感将提高学生对写作能力的信心和更高的成功率。这项授予奥本大学的NSF研究生教育创新(IGE)奖将为工程学研究生实施一个创新的、多方面的、可持续的写作计划。该计划的结构将鼓励他们在写作中发展自我效能感。这项研究具有创新性，因为它采用了写作教学和干预的现有和基于证据的组成部分--包括研讨会、研究生水平的写作课程、小组写作支持和写作密集型课程开发--并将它们整合到工程学的学科背景中。这项研究旨在为研究生提供在STEM领域有效写作的策略和资源，并建立以证据为基础的、系统的写作教学和干预措施，这些教学和干预措施是可持续的、可扩展的，并可适应STEM背景。写作系统由四个部分组成：(1)教授写作技能的讲习班，并促进招募不同参与者加入其他部分，(2)特定学科的研究生写作课程，(3)同行写作小组，以及(4)公开提供的开放教育资源网站上的写作资源。学生可以选择参加其中的任何一部分。这项研究的目的是通过评估奥本大学小型(生物系统)、中型(航空航天)和大型(民用)工程专业的学生，确定系统的各个组成部分如何单独或共同影响STEM写作能力。自我效能感、写作自我调节和写作能力之间的关系将使用直接和间接测量进行评估。以学生为中心的直接测量包括学生对写作的自我效能感和自我调节因素，以及研究小组评估的他们的写作质量。间接地，学生将接受采访，以获得关于他们参与写作系统组成部分的经验以及他们写作的自我效能感和自我调节因素的更多信息。研究生教育创新(IGE)项目专注于研究生教育研究。IGE的目标是试验、测试和验证研究生教育的创新方法，并产生将这些方法推广到更广泛社区所需的知识。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Few graduate students receive sustained, discipline-specific foundational instruction in STEM writing, instead relying on ad-hoc support from faculty advisors. This form of writing support may work for students who already possess the knowledge and skills to write successfully in their fields, but it is not inclusive nor best practice. Moreover, without systematic writing support, students who are either members of populations historically underrepresented in STEM fields or international students especially face obstacles to success in graduate programs. For students who struggle to differentiate disciplinary characteristics of effective writing from their advisors’ idiosyncratic expectations, engaging in these existing forms of writing support can be confusing, frustrating, and futile. In addition, such writing instruction and intervention methods do not help students develop self-efficacy, i.e., the belief that they can carry out a specific task to achieve the desired result. It is anticipated that self-efficacy will lead to improved confidence in writing abilities and higher success rates for students. This NSF Innovations of Graduate Education (IGE) award to Auburn University will implement an innovative, multifaceted, sustainable writing program for graduate students in engineering. The structure of the program will encourage them to develop self-efficacy in writing. The research is innovative because it takes existing and evidence-based components of writing instruction and intervention — including workshops, graduate-level writing courses, small group writing support, and writing-intensive curriculum development — and integrates them within the disciplinary contexts of engineering. The research seeks to equip graduate students with strategies and resources for writing effectively in STEM fields and to establish evidence-based, systemic writing instruction and interventions that are sustainable, scalable, and adaptable across STEM contexts. The Writing SySTEM comprises four components: (1) workshops to teach writing skills and promote the recruitment of diverse participants into other components, (2) discipline-specific graduate writing courses, (3) peer writing groups, and (4) writing resources hosted on a publicly available Open Educational Resource site. Students may electively participate in any of the components. The goal of this research is to determine how components of the SySTEM, individually or in concert, affect STEM writing abilities by evaluating students from small (biosystems), medium (aerospace), and large (civil) graduate engineering programs at Auburn University. Relationships among self-efficacy, self-regulation of writing, and writing ability will be evaluated using direct and indirect measures. Student-focused direct measures include students’ self-efficacy and self-regulatory factors for writing and the quality of their writing as assessed by the research team. Indirectly, students will be interviewed to acquire additional information about their experiences participating in the Writing SySTEM’s components and their self-efficacy and self-regulatory factors for writing.The Innovations in Graduate Education (IGE) program is focused on research in graduate education. The goals of IGE are to pilot, test and validate innovative approaches to graduate education and to generate the knowledge required to move these approaches into the broader community.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.