TY - GEN
T1 - Evaluation of two workshops for graduate students on communicating research in engineering and science
AU - Alley, Michael
AU - Srajek, Leslie
AU - Johnson, Amy Wagoner
AU - Stickler, Michelle
PY - 2007
Y1 - 2007
N2 - Graduate students face imposing hurdles in communicating their research. Unfortunately, many institutions do not have the resources to offer semester-long courses on presenting and documenting research. This paper presents the evaluation and subsequent improvement of two graduate student workshops on communicating research in engineering and science. These two workshops-one on research presentations and the other on research writing-were based on highly successful workshops developed for professional researchers. Over four years, we evaluated these two workshops in twenty offerings at five institutions: The Pennsylvania State University, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the University of Oslo, the University of Texas at Austin, and Virginia Tech. Program evaluations found more than 95% of participating students strongly agreed or agreed that the workshops were valuable experiences. We also found that the workshops were more effective when accompanied by pre-workshop assignments in which the students attempted to communicate a portion of their research, and by follow-up sessions in which the students critiqued each others' research communications. Moreover, the teachings of the workshops were better received when recruitment for the workshops occurred through the advising faculty members and when those faculty members were made aware beforehand of the workshop's approaches to gray-area stylistic issues, such as whether to use the first person in research documents.
AB - Graduate students face imposing hurdles in communicating their research. Unfortunately, many institutions do not have the resources to offer semester-long courses on presenting and documenting research. This paper presents the evaluation and subsequent improvement of two graduate student workshops on communicating research in engineering and science. These two workshops-one on research presentations and the other on research writing-were based on highly successful workshops developed for professional researchers. Over four years, we evaluated these two workshops in twenty offerings at five institutions: The Pennsylvania State University, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the University of Oslo, the University of Texas at Austin, and Virginia Tech. Program evaluations found more than 95% of participating students strongly agreed or agreed that the workshops were valuable experiences. We also found that the workshops were more effective when accompanied by pre-workshop assignments in which the students attempted to communicate a portion of their research, and by follow-up sessions in which the students critiqued each others' research communications. Moreover, the teachings of the workshops were better received when recruitment for the workshops occurred through the advising faculty members and when those faculty members were made aware beforehand of the workshop's approaches to gray-area stylistic issues, such as whether to use the first person in research documents.
KW - First person
KW - Graduate students
KW - Research presentations
KW - Research writing
KW - Slide design
KW - Workshops
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=50049112756&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=50049112756&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1109/FIE.2007.4417952
DO - 10.1109/FIE.2007.4417952
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:50049112756
SN - 1424410843
SN - 9781424410842
T3 - Proceedings - Frontiers in Education Conference, FIE
SP - S4G8-S4G13
BT - 37th ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference, FIE
T2 - 37th ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference, FIE
Y2 - 10 October 2007 through 13 October 2007
ER -