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

很少有研究生在STEM写作中接受持续的，特定学科的基础指导，而是依赖于教师顾问的临时支持。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尤其面临着在研究生课程中取得成功的障碍。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，参与这些现有的写作支持形式可能会令人困惑，令人沮丧，而且徒劳。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，他们相信自己可以完成特定的任务以达到预期的结果。据估计，自我效能感将导致提高写作能力的信心和更高的成功率的学生。这个NSF研究生教育创新（IGE）奖给奥本大学将实施一个创新的，多方面的，可持续的写作计划的研究生在工程。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，因为它需要现有的和基于证据的写作教学和干预的组成部分-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科的背景下。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，系统的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。写作系统包括四个组成部分：（1）讲习班，教写作技巧，并促进招聘不同的参与者到其他组件，（2）学科特定的研究生写作课程，（3）同行写作组，（4）写作资源托管在一个公开的开放教育资源网站。学生可以选择参加任何一个组成部分。本研究的目标是确定如何组成的SySTEM，单独或在演唱会上，影响STEM写作能力的评估学生从小型（生物系统），中型（航空航天），大型（民用）研究生工程项目在奥本大学。自我效能感、写作自我调节与写作能力之间的关系将通过直接和间接的测量来评估。以学生为中心的直接测量包括学生写作的自我效能和自我调节因素以及研究小组对他们写作质量的评估。间接地，学生将接受采访，以获得更多的信息，他们的经验参与写作SySTEM的组件和他们的自我效能和自我调节因素的写作。研究生教育创新（IGE）计划的重点是研究生教育的研究。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的社区所需的知识。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得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来支持。

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.