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

写作系统：研究生写作教学和干预的系统方法

• 批准号: 2224967
• 负责人: Russell Mailen
• 金额: $ 43.48万
• 依托单位: Auburn University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2022-10-01 至 2025-09-30
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2224967&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Writing; SySTEM; Systemic; Approach; Graduate

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.

很少有研究生在STEM写作方面接受持续的、特定学科的基础指导，而是依赖于指导教师的特别支持。这种形式的写作支持可能对那些已经拥有在他们的领域成功写作的知识和技能的学生有效，但它不是包容性的，也不是最佳实践。此外，如果没有系统的写作支持，那些在STEM领域历史上代表性不足的学生或国际学生在研究生课程中取得成功尤其面临障碍。对于那些努力将有效写作的学科特征与导师的特殊期望区分开来的学生来说，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，这种写作指导和干预方法并不能帮助学生发展自我效能感，即他们相信自己可以执行特定的任务来达到预期的结果。预计自我效能感会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国家科学基金会研究生教育创新奖将为工程研究生实施一个创新的、多方面的、可持续的写作项目。该计划的结构将鼓励他们在写作中发展自我效能。这项研究是创新的，因为它采用了现有的和基于证据的写作指导和干预的组成部分——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。该研究旨在为研究生提供在STEM领域有效写作的策略和资源，并建立基于证据的系统写作指导和干预措施，这些指导和干预措施在STEM背景下是可持续的、可扩展的和可适应的。写作系统由四个部分组成：(1)教授写作技巧的工作坊，并促进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；(4)在公开的开放教育资源网站上提供写作资源。学生可以选修任何一个组成部分。本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（土木）研究生工程项目的学生，确定系统的组成部分如何单独或协同影响STEM写作能力。自我效能、写作自我调节和写作能力之间的关系将采用直接和间接的方法进行评估。以学生为中心的直接测量包括学生的写作自我效能感和自我调节因素以及研究小组评估的写作质量。间接地，学生将接受采访，以获得有关他们参与写作系统组成部分的经验以及他们的写作自我效能和自我调节因素的额外信息。研究生教育创新（IGE）项目专注于研究生教育的研究。IGE的目标是试点、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的社区所需的知识。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。