Board 395: Supporting STEM Faculty in Adopting and Adapting Writing Pedagogies

While the importance of communication skills is widely recognized in engineering professions and included in accreditation standards, developing such skills is challenging. Evidence-based best practices have been identified in writing studies but are not well known among faculty in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Many of these best practices have been developed in courses capped at 15 to 30 students and do not scale well, which presents additional challenges for STEM faculty teaching large classes. Our Writing Across Engineering and Science team has taken a transdisciplinary action research approach to this problem, engaging across engineering, science, and writing studies to iteratively develop, implement, and assess collaborative solutions. The program we co-created includes a faculty learning community and individualized mentoring, both facilitated by transdisciplinary teams, to support STEM faculty as they adopt and adapt new writing pedagogies. Our analysis of program effectiveness is based primarily on faculty surveys, mentoring records, interviews, and analysis of course materials. In one case, we are also investigating the effects of pedagogical changes on student writing. To date, 54 faculty from 15 different STEM departments at our university have participated. Most participated only in the faculty learning community. Thirteen have participated in both the faculty learning community and the individual mentoring, while 7 participated only as mentees. Data are available for 12 of the faculty who participated only in the faculty learning community; 11 of these faculty reported making pedagogical changes. Of the 20 mentees, we have documented pedagogical changes from all 20. The examples provided illustrate both the types of pedagogical changes participants are making and the concepts that seem to be more difficult to implement. Overall, our analysis suggests that this program effectively promotes pedagogical change and innovation around writing in STEM classes.