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Although active learning is highly recognized and recommended in the educational community, instructors are still struggling with how to incorporate active learning tools into writing courses. This study aims to 1) describe specific challenges encountered in the course of Molecular Cell Biology Laboratory--Critical Thinking through Writing (BIOL3810-CTW); 2) introduce the active learning approaches and metacognition integrated into this writing-intensive course; 3) demonstrate the effectiveness of these active learning approaches in engaging students in classes; and 4) share the principles of integrating active learning activities into writing courses in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and beyond.

This study examines how and why 20 instructors (17 tenure-line and 3 nontenure-line) in introductory service courses enact their pedagogical values and address current concerns (e.g., personal branding, LinkedIn, and applicant tracking systems) when teaching résumés and cover letters. Research methods included a demographics survey, qualitative interviews, and critical discourse analysis of assignment sheets and deidentified student examples. Results provide an opportunity to renegotiate gaps between Business and Professional Communication's research and pedagogical methods, shifting from overemphasizing formatting and checklists and toward understanding job applications as workplace genre ecologies to encourage deeper learning.

Given the rapid advances in information communication technology (ICT) and the ever-increasing likelihood that students will be collaborating on cross-cultural teams in their future careers, creating opportunities to engage in collaborative writing projects across borders and then observing the dynamics of international virtual online collaboration have high pedagogical value, though studies are scarce. This research examines the learning process that occurred when engineering and computer science students from France and Germany were connected with business and technical writing students from the US to work on co-authored documents. The researchers were specifically interested in how students addressed the situational constraints of the collaboration and how those constraints influenced students' choices of communication and collaboration tools. Two separate projects were assigned and each employed reading, writing, "talking," and critical thinking components. Analysis of post-project survey data and the correlation of students' ICT choices revealed students had to continually renegotiate their communication and collaboration. Allowing students to make rhetorical choices resulted in cultural learning through hands-on experience with these constraint variables: English language proficiency, cultural differences, project complexity, time difference, and technology. The results from this study will be useful to ESP pedagogy in projecting how to prepare students for international virtual collaboration.

This exploratory research focuses on a one-semester subject designed to facilitate deliberate practice while explicitly aiming to develop postgraduate students' basic research skills: academic writing and its co-requisite skill, critical thinking. The research considers the alignment of the curriculum and assessment design of the subject 'Research and Communication Skills for the Natural Sciences' (SC5055) with the RSD framework. The research then identifies students who benefit most from a focus on the development of research and communication skills. The impact of SC5055 on students' achievement and their ability to self-evaluate the development of their skills and understanding is also explored.

Using rhetorical genre theory, the authors theorize the engineering design process as a type of embodied genre enacted through typified performances of bodies engaged with discourses, texts, and objects in genre-rich spaces of design activity. The authors illustrate this through an analysis of ethnographic data from an engineering design course to show how a genred repertoire of embodied routines is demonstrated for students and later taken up as part of their design work. A greater appreciation of the interconnection between genre and design as well as the role of typification in producing embodied genres can potentially transform how writing studies conceives of and teaches both design processes and genres in technical and professional communication settings.

Organizational patterns can serve as a teaching strategy for instructors and as a learning tool for students to develop their expository writing skills, which are commonly required for assignments (for example, laboratory reports and research papers) in Food Science courses and in their future careers. The article discusses the importance of organizational patterns for teaching expository writing through an interdisciplinary collaboration. The teaching collaboration occurred with professors from Food Science, English, and Anthropology in an introductory Food Science course (FSCI 232) taught at California State University Long Beach (CSULB). In FSCI 232, students learned how to use organizational patterns to interpret and explain the content of an infographic obtained from the Food Technology magazine, published by the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT). The infographic "Global Obesity's Expanding Girth, the World is Getting Fatter" served as a visual stimulus to help students identify these patterns, focusing on inquiry and analysis of scientific data and skills required for technical writing. Furthermore, the article illustrates those other potential applications of organizational patterns using the infographic could extend to interdisciplinary content (that is, Food Anthropology), which facilitates the development of cultural competency and sensitivity in food systems. Additionally, the article provides sample activities for teachers to use in their classrooms. To summarize, organizational patterns can serve as an effective teaching strategy to enhance students' writing skills across Food Science and related disciplines.

Background: Federal law requires most school districts to develop school wellness policies (SWPs), which state agencies assist in by providing templates. Templates provide standard language, which districts may edit for numerous reasons. We aimed to identify the frequency/consistency of template usage and identify the types of edits districts make when using SWP templates. Methods: We identified SWPs (N = 117) and templates (N = 2) from districts in 1 Texas public health region. We developed template specific coding guides, which allowed us to examine the frequency SWPs used template text within multiple areas (eg, nutrition goals, reporting). We also collected/categorized SWP edits from the template text and conducted a thematic analysis of locally developed SWPs and SWP templates. Results: Of 117 SWPs, 81.2% used a 2020 template, 13.7% used a 2005 template, and 5.1% created their own SWP. Across template-based SWPs, 44 content edits (0.4 per policy) occurred in 9 categories. Thematic analysis revealed: (1) locally developed SWPs created an informed mission statement linked to their goals; (2) Locally developed SWPs provided details that the current template includes in wellness plans. Conclusions: Most districts used exact template language when writing their SWP. Adding spaces where districts can specify details could improve SWP content.

Technical and professional communication master's students work with a faculty advisor to complete a three-credit independent research (IR) project, featuring original research. Stakeholders recommended the IR thesis be revised to better communicate IR to industry. Using a writing, activity theory, and genre theory lens, I analyzed what contradictions emerged between academic and workplace activity systems as stakeholders recommended genre revisions. I analyzed faculty and professional advisory board meeting transcripts, alumni and student surveys, and a Graduate School director and thesis examiner interview. Results indicated the thesis' spectrum of functions, from its strengths encouraging students' research proficiency to the limiting way it showcases IR as a product, not a process. Stakeholders suggested no thesis changes but recommended IR genre system modifications. As agents of change, students are uniquely positioned to use the IR genre system to address workplace communication problems and help mend our discipline's academia-industry divide.

Lecture videos have become an increasingly prevalent and important source of learning content. Lecturergenerated summaries may be used during a video lecture to improve student recall. Furthermore, the integration of a guest lecturer into the classroom may be a beneficial educational practice drawing the learner's attention to specific content or providing a change of pace. The current study measures the effects of lecturer-generated summaries and the inclusion of a guest lecturer on students' ability to recall online video lecture contents. Seven sections of a flipped scientific writing course were divided into three groups. The control group videos featured a lecturer speaking with PowerPoint slides in the background. The "Summaries Only" group viewed the same videos as those of the control, with the addition of lecturergenerated summaries spliced into the middles and ends of the videos, respectively, and these summaries were delivered by the same lecturers of the original video. The "Summaries with a Guest Lecturer" group viewed the same videos as the control, but with the addition of lecturer-generated summaries respectively spliced into the middles and ends of the videos, and these summaries were instead delivered by a guest lecturer. Student recall was measured through two online multiple-choice quizzes. The results of the study show that the Summaries Only group significantly outperformed the other two groups, while no significant difference was found between the performances of the control and the Summaries with a Guest Lecturer group. The results suggest that lecturer-generated summaries help to improve student recall of online video lecture contents. However, the introduction of a guest lecturer shown in a different setting may cause learners to lose concentration, nullifying the benefit of the summaries.

We present a strategy for using scientific argumentation in an early undergraduate laboratory course to teach disciplinary writing practices and to promote critical thinking, knowledge transformation, and understanding of the scientific method. The approach combines targeted writing instruction; data analysis and interpretation; formulation of a hypothesis; and construction of an argument. Students submit and receive feedback on two drafts of two different argumentation essays, providing the opportunity for guided practice. Each written argument is intended to draw on several weeks' course material, including short lectures, discussions, readings, and problem sets. Thus our aim with these writing assignments is to help students synthesize content and concepts, deepening their learning. We have found that this inquiry-based approach to writing engages students in course material, and significantly improves both writing and learning. We observed the greatest improvement among students with the lowest initial scores, suggesting that lower-achieving students benefitted disproportionately from this approach. Students have responded positively to the use of writing in the course, many stating on course evaluations that this is the first time they have received instruction in scientific writing. They have also pointed to a greater ''big-picture'' understanding of the course gained through writing. We describe the course and our curriculum, and provide suggestions for implementation as well as rubrics used to evaluate problem sets and student argumentation essays.

In response to calls for pedagogical reforms in undergraduate biology courses to decrease student attrition rates and increase active learning, this article describes one faculty member's conversion from traditional teaching methods to more engaging forms of practice. Partially told as a narrative, this article illustrates a.) the way many faculty initially learn to teach by modeling the pedagogy from their own undergraduate programs; b.) the kind of support biology faculty may need to break out of traditional molds; c.) how writing can promote active learning; and d.) the impact of reformed pedagogy on student levels of engagement. The latter will be demonstrated through assessment results gathered from student surveys, reflective writing, and focus group interview. Ultimately, the study challenges misunderstandings some faculty might have regarding the value of writing in science classes and offers inspiration, urging critical reflection and persistence.

Students often ask why technical writing and literature courses are in the same department. Many students also share that technical and professional communication (TPC) courses are new to them. They are more familiar with high school literature courses and first-year composition courses. And given these experiences, they are often unsure about why TPC is in an English department that studies Shakespeare or research essays. Often, students' attitudes toward studying English and writing changes quickly. They show new-found excitement as they discover connections between English courses, business or STEM courses, and internships. Many share that they would have benefitted from taking this type of course earlier in their studies. This experience led Catherine Forsa to consider an approach that emphasizes these connections earlier in students' academic careers with a first-year writing course (or equivalent early-career course) that studies TPC alongside literature. In the course described here, students read and write about medical documents, legal contracts, business letters, maps, and public reports in addition to poems and short stories. Students work to understand how and why texts are produced with special attention to genre and audience. The course has four units: (1) an introduction unit that sets up key concepts related to studying literature and TPC, (2) a literature-focused unit, (3) a TPC-focused unit, and (4) a capstone reflection unit that encourages students to consider the transfer of knowledge to other contexts.

Peer review is applied as a powerful tool to enhance student collaboration online writing. The purpose of this paper is to analyse learners' mechanisms of peer reviewing in the nature of student interventions and interactions in written online peer reviewing and how categorization of student comments can be used as a means for analysing student peer reviewing. The study is an in-depth investigation of computer science students participating in a technical writing course, using Google Drive as their joint work space. While writing their group text, the students were participating in peer reviewing work. Results show combining analysis models provide a better understanding of the implication of commenting in both scrutinizing the progressive scale of assistance, as well as area, nature, and type of commenting, together with what themes evolve. Further, taking turns providing feedback is an enriching activity.

There are different cognitive strategies for processing information which in turn influence students' academic achievement. This paper reports an investigation of cognitive styles and achievement scores of secondary school students. In the study, the standardised Group Embedded Figures Test was used to determine the influence of student's cognitive styles on Technical Drawing students' achievement in Senior Secondary Schools in Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja. A research question and null hypothesis tested at 0.05 level of significance guided the study. The design of the study was a causal comparative or (ex post-facto) design. The sample for the study consisted of 87 Senior Secondary School Two (SSSII) Technical Drawing students drawn from the three sampled schools in three Area Councils of FCT. The students were categorized into three groups based on Group embedded figure test (GEFT). The instrument used for data collection was Technical Drawing Achievement test (TDAT). The instrument was face and content validated by three Technical Drawing Lecturers and two experts in Measurement and Evaluation. The reliability coefficient of Basic Electricity Achievement Test (BEAT) was established using Kuder-Richardson formula 20 (K-R20) and this yielded an index of 0.69. Data were analyzed with mean, standard deviation and analysis of variance (ANOVA). Results of the study revealed that cognitive style significantly influenced students' achievements in Technical Drawing. Recommendations made among others were that students' cognitive styles be adopted for effective teaching of Technical Drawing in Secondary Schools.

This educational study aimed to explore the feasibility and acceptance of a literacy exercise adopted from the real world of scientific publishing in a cell and tissue biology course. For that purpose, a tertiary-level multimodality science course, which integrated a blended learning faculty and student lectures, journal club, and wet laboratory sessions including a research project as well as examinations, was complemented by essay writing of a review and peer reviewing of five manuscripts. All tasks contributed to the final course mark. Special emphasis was laid on the usability of different E-Learning applications for scientific writing and teacher- and peer-assessment procedures. Further, potential influences of student characteristics on their peer- and self-assessments as well as their acceptance of the feedback from their peers were evaluated. Seventy-five undergraduate students from different Bachelor programs were included in the study. Plagiarism check and double-blind assessments of the essays were performed using "Turnitin.com." Students self-assessed their paper and received feedback from five peers and the teacher. Peer assessment was more severe than the teacher- or self-assessment, and the peer mark correlated best with the final course mark. Students with better marks assessed more generously, and there had moderate tendencies for influences of gender and background on peer feedback behavior. The students perceived the writing and assessment exercises, especially being peer-assessed, as demanding, but rewarding and a great learning experience. The additional tasks were feasible using E-Learning technology, which should foster future biomedical courses to train writing skills and the ability to cope with different roles in the scientific community.

Understanding the abstract principles of statistical experimental design can challenge undergraduate students, especially when learned in a lecture setting. This article presents a concrete and easily replicated example of experimental design principles in action through a hands-on learning activity for students enrolled in an experimental design course. The activity, conducted during five 50-min classes, requires the students to work as a team to design and execute a simple and safe factorial experiment and collect and analyze the data. During three in-class design meetings, the students design and plan all aspects of the experiment, including choosing the response variable and factors, making a list of needed supplies, creating a randomized run schedule with the MINITAB DOE utility, and writing a statistical analysis plan. A feasibility study is conducted in the fourth class. During the fifth and last class, the students conduct the experiment. Each student writes a lab report including all background research, methods, analyses, and conclusions, as well as a reflection on the learning experience. Students' reflections indicate the active-learning experience was enjoyable and boosted course engagement and perceived conceptual understanding.

Teaching evaluation is an important issue in the learning process in higher education. In addition to the teaching evaluation on campus, feedback from alumni is also very important to instruction improvement. Undergraduates and graduates in universities are the main labor force in Taiwan; therefore, many higher education institutions pay attention to the feedback of competency. However, the written questionnaire has limitations and lacks sufficient evidence to improve curriculum planning and instruction activities. In the present study, a systematic survey in the 'University Career and Competency Assessment Network' was applied to analyze the results. Data were collected from 1,080 participants. The results can be summarized as follows: (1) 'Learn-Practice Fit' was positive to the 'Satisfaction' at workplaces. (2) 'Responsibility and discipline' were significantly positive concerning 'Communication and Expression,' 'Interpersonal Interaction', and 'Teamwork.' (3) 'Service' and 'Information technology writing' need to be improved in the training of Information Management students.

Teaching and composing with multimedia humanizes online technical writing and communication classes. However, students do not always see the connection between multimedia instructional materials, multimedia assignments, and the course learning outcomes. Purposeful pedagogy-driven course design uses multimedia instructional materials to connect assignments, course materials, and assessments with course outcomes. Technical writing instructors can integrate synchronous and asynchronous multimedia elements to address not only the "what" and "why" of online technical writing instruction but also the "how" of multimedia instructional materials. Example multimedia instructional materials and student projects discussed in the article can increase student retention and promote engaged learning.

This article describes an interdisciplinary, partially online honors course entitled Video Game Theory and Design. The article reviews the literature surrounding video games and technical communication and then outlines the learning objectives for the course. The authors describe individual and team-produced assignments and suggest game design techniques for motivating students. We explain how we assess different projects, including oral game pitches and the complex technical Game Design Documents that are students' final deliverables. Finally, we discuss how game design techniques provide new perspectives on writing and generate new possibilities for technical communication assignments. We close by proposing three tactics that are useful for teaching technical communication students in hybrid and fully online courses: (a) nonlinear association for creative thinking; (b) team-based assignments for writing and editing using game-based tools; and (c) iterative prototyping and playtesting for multimodal production. Each tactic is contextualized using examples drawn from the field.

In increasingly online higher education environments, instructors must develop positive and community-oriented learning environments, equivalent to, if different from, face-to-face learning experiences. Connectivism and communities of inquiry are complementary theories that facilitate the design and development of online learning and enable online learners to connect with peers. This article discusses two pedagogical interventions that encourage connectivism and foster communities of inquiry in online technical communication programs: (a) a face-to-face orientation workshop at the beginning of an online program and (b) a peer-review activity in a research methods graduate course. The article explains the development, deployment, and evaluation of the activities.

Many students in the sciences are interested in exploring research opportunities; however, the one-on-one faculty mentorship model often lacks the ability to supervise large numbers of students. An alternative mechanism for exposing undergraduate students to the research process is participation in a Course-based Undergraduate Research Experience (CURE). CUREs promote inclusivity in research, and provide structure for both students and faculty while engaging students in scientific discovery. This study describes a model for a CURE in cancer biology, and reports student outcomes. Students utilized bioinformatics to predict targets genes of miR-100, a microRNA that is differentially expressed in a cell culture model of breast cancer metastasis. Students were required to engage with primary literature to write a grant proposal for their target gene, and then were trained to perform basic molecular biology techniques to test their individual hypotheses. Additionally, the course integrated opportunities to troubleshoot experiments and present data to the group, and culminated in a publication style scientific report discussing the results of their individual research project. Students reported significantly increased confidence in executing various molecular biology techniques and research-related skills based on pre- and post-assessment surveys. Student feedback also indicated that they gained an understanding of primary literature, experimental design, and scientific writing as a result of the course. This study supports that CUREs can be an effective pedagogy for not only engaging larger groups of students in research, but also improving their confidence and skill set in the laboratory.

The recognition of social work as a writing-intensive profession is the first step needed to bridge the divide between academic and practice writing. The demonstration of persuasive writing skills rarely achieves a highly-ranked social work curriculum priority despite the recognition by faculty that these skills are essential for effective practice. This paper features curriculum examples that incorporate persuasive writing skills, the use of related rubrics, a proposed framework for bridging the gap between academic and practice writing, and a comprehensive illustration of persuasive writing in the form of a child welfare court report. It concludes with recommendations for enhancing student writing skills.

This is an exploratory study in an undergraduate EFL business-writing course studying participants' ability to read, comprehend, and represent text visually using concept mapping (CM), summary writing, and social network analysis techniques as complementary strategies. The idea with this experiment was to explore if students are capable of analyzing business and technology information from technical readings in a way to represent it graphically with CMs and social networks. Preliminary data from the case study showed that students were reasonably successful in processing texts on topics related to the Tesla electric car company's business and technology models. Multiple iterations and guided instructions when designing CMs demonstrated the interplay of various actors, processes, interactions, and contexts. Student performance indicated significant expertise with CM design and text summarization but inadequate performance designing social networks, indicating the necessity for more structured instructions and practice.

Introducing undergraduates to the peer-review process helps them understand how scientific evidence is evaluated and communicated. In a large biology course, technical writing was taught through mock peer-review. Students learned to critique original research through a multistep framework, calibrating their assessment skills with class standards. We hypothesized students' assessment of their own and their peers' writing becomes more accurate as they gain academic experience, and that novice students are more overconfident in their writing abilities. Counter to many instructors' assumptions, our results indicated that regardless of level of academic experience, students' self-assessed grades were higher than peer-assessed grades (p < 0.01). Both self- and peer-assessed grades were significantly higher than the instructor's grade (p < 0.01). Overall, the peer-review exercise was positively viewed by students. Most students found the peer-review process beneficial, and 88% reported taking it seriously, despite knowing they would receive instructor's feedback at the final stage of the writing exercise. Ultimately, the peer-review process provides an effective way to teach technical writing to undergraduates, but instructors should not assume that returning students with greater academic experience are better judges of their own performance. This study illustrates that all students are equally challenged to accurately assess the quality of their own work.

The ability to read and compose original scientific literature is critical to educating informed citizens, yet may be severely lacking in undergraduate curricula. We developed a linked course offering in fall 2017 consisting of a 16-student group taking an introductory biology course paired with a first-year composition course. The composition course focused specifically on scientific literature composed in the Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion (IMRaD) structure. In the composition course, instruction focused on helping students conceptualize and compose proposals, poster presentations, and manuscripts based on their lab activities. We surveyed for prior experience with scientific literature and self-reported reading and writing confidence. Participants in the linked courses showed an improvement in self-reported ability and confidence in writing compared to a control group that did not participate. We assembled a rubric assessing correct IMRaD structure and used it to assess composition before and after the linked courses. Adherence to IMRaD improved significantly for the Methods section. Our experiences indicate that learning communities can be useful pedagogies to provide students with confidence and learning gains that facilitate use of information and communication.

This article reports on a study that examined papers written by graduate students in the Physical Seminary course at Johns Hopkins University (1892-1913) to investigate how students reused various visuals of the interferometer to construct narratives of late-19th-century Ether research. Their representations of the interferometer focused on the mechanics of the devices by constructing a series of textual-visual relationships, requiring that the reader scan back and forth between the written text and the accompanying visual. These multimodal texts demonstrate how the students used writing activities to create a narrative of equipment development, which highlighted the centrality of trained vision in enculturating graduate students into disciplinary writing practices in the late 19th century. Through an analysis of the specific interactions and the network of visuals the students used to reconstruct a history of Ether investigation, scholars of writing and rhetoric can see how important inclusion of equipment and its detailed discussion was to graduate writing and disciplinary enculturation in the sciences.

This nationwide study of business communication instructors examined course delivery, course outlook, topics and depth of coverage, social media and technology coverage, diversity coverage, critical thinking, and accessibility. The outlook for the course appears positive and promising, and instructors continue to add content to the course. An important finding is that business communication instructors' level of confidence in technology significantly affects how they cover technology-mediated communication. Therefore, we suggest professional associations and higher education institutions should provide more opportunities for voluntary training in these newer communication technologies. Further research is needed about the strain placed on business communication instructors.

This study explores Qzone weblog for critical peer feedback (CPF) in Business English writing (BEW) among the Chinese undergraduates. A qualitative case study is conducted by Nvivo 8 to analyze the three research data of semi-structured interviews, BEW writing assignments, and CPF artifacts on Qzone weblog. Three research questions are focused to study the case participants' perception of this study, the strength and weakness of Qzone for critical peer feedback, and online features of Qzone affecting critical peer feedback in Business English writing. The study aims to explore how Qzone weblog affect critical peer feedback in the online environment. The findings indicate that Qzone is a suitable type of weblog for online critical peer feedback, especially, for the Chinese undergraduates. The strength and online features of Qzone are models by Nvivo 8 for description by figures. The six aspects of strength and five online features are coded by Nvivo 8. The only weakness of Qzone is the character number limitation for each blog and feedback. The conclusion of this study will be implied for the use of Qzone weblog and other kinds of weblog for online peer feedback in English writing.

In academia, plagiarism adheres to the traditional definition: utilizing another person's words or ideas without proper credit. Students are taught to cite everything, while instructors are given tools to detect plagiarism. This ultimately creates an atmosphere of paranoia, where students fear accusation and teachers are convinced that plagiarism will occur unless they remain ever vigilant. At the same time, technical writers create, reuse, remix, and remarket content on a regular basis in the form of instruction manuals, boilerplates, and other technical, factual, straightforward texts. In academia, the technical writer would be accused of (self-) plagiarism, which would not--given the context--be the case. In the professional world, where the majority of writing will be technical, students will find themselves creating content based on already-existing texts, a direct contradiction of their academic training. This teaching case asks students to consider not only plagiarism but also the concepts of copying and remixing, two ideas closely related to plagiarism, and develop their own conclusions, both personal and professional, about what is and is not ethical communication. It also seeks to demonstrate the importance of recognizing that difference and adjusting accordingly so that professional communications not only meet ethical standards but are also produced in an efficient and cost-effective manner.

The present paper focuses on the acquisition of hedging techniques by first-year undergraduate students at the University of Tokyo in Japan. One of the major difficulties faced by aspiring science writers lies in positioning their arguments in relation to the preexisting literature. This originates from the fact that writing in the field of natural sciences is built around the evaluation of uncertainty pertaining to an experimental analysis. In addition to the display of statistical estimators (e.g. p-value), the level of confidence inherent to scientific findings is generally communicated through hedging. Hedging allows authors to communicate the credibility of their statements so as to persuade the audience of the soundness of their interpretations while ensuring that these statements remain within the context that is accepted by their scientific community. Hedging is often used in the Discussion section of scientific reports and, to a lesser extent, in the Introduction. Second language learners of English face difficulties when writing these sections due to the use of hedges. Using a qualitative analysis of 20 student papers we found that students express uncertainty in relation to scientific information differently when dealing with their own experimental data compared to results in the literature. We argue that completing an actual scientific experiment within a science writing class is important to provide the context in which the theoretical rules of hedging are applied.

Reflection is a high-impact practice in education. This paper explores the premise, approach, and outcomes of a learning community centered on scholarly engagement with the literature of reflection. Using the reflection model operationalized by a national consortium, we developed, implemented, and assessed reflection activities designed to create opportunities for transfer of skills and conceptual change. Two case studies reveal commonalities in using reflection in a college setting. We explore the questions that emerged as a result of our experiences, and connect this work to the importance of engaging with colleagues in a community of learners.

The purpose of this study was to explore critical thinking skills in peer feedback for Business English writing in order to facilitate the quality of peer feedback and quality of Business English writing. "Critical peer feedback" was conceptualized with the integration of "critical thinking" and "peer feedback" in order to improve the quality of peer feedback. This study explored the process, content and factors of critical peer feedback through Qzone weblogs, and summarized the model of critical peer feedback. A qualitative case study was conducted with a group of six junior students majoring in Business English for one semester in a Chinese university. Three models of critical thinking including Revised Bloom's Taxonomy, Paul-Elder Model and Reichenbach's Six Steps Model, were transferred to the participants in the workshops. Three kinds of data including semi-structured interview transcripts, six writing assignments and artifacts of critical peer feedback, were analyzed by QSR NVivo 8. The findings revealed that the Revised Bloom's Taxonomy is more acceptable for the beginners of critical peer feedback which provides a six-step model of critical thinking. The process of critical peer feedback in online context was summarized as four steps- "intake", "critical thinking", "output", and "post-output". Each of the four steps had several mental processes in critical peer feedback. This study may be significant for the knowledge of higher-order peer feedback to facilitate the quality of higher-level writing.

In an Australian legal education context, there is minimal research on designing and implementing a court report as a summative assessment task. This journal article attempts to fill this gap by reflecting on the journey of a legal educator who pioneered a court report for a core final year course in a Bachelor of Laws program with large cohorts and improved it over 13 semesters in six years. Integrating reflective practice into the court report enhanced its level of authenticity. Notably, this journal article disseminates an example of a court report template and a criterion-referenced assessment rubric for a reflective court report that was grounded in the literature that conceptualises "reflective practice" and has been refined over time with the benefit of a longstanding and rich experience.

This article details how we integrate Jody Shipka's approach to creativity and rhetorical awareness into a Professional Writing, Rhetoric, and Technology major at the University of South Florida. We situate Shipka's pedagogy alongside postpedagogy, differentiating the latter from postcomposition. In short, we argue that postpedagogy echoes educational theory that insists upon the importance of disequilibrium. We then report how our students respond to our disequilibrating pedagogy, collecting survey responses via an IRB approved study. We hope these responses can help instructors interested in our postpedagogical notion of creativity anticipate and prepare for student discomfort and resistance--to recognize the fine distinction between productively confused and hopelessly lost. With that goal in mind, we conclude by addressing difficult questions of assessment.

In this article, I argue that technical reporting and documentation processes function to mitigate uncertainty and enable complex systems in the endeavor of big science. The argument draws on two years of field research investigating technical reporting and documentation processes at a federally funded supercomputing center dedicated to scientific research. A central question the study sought to answer was, "How does one build a new supercomputer?" One of the answers that emerged is that supercomputers are built by the genre assemblages of documents that mitigate financial, political, and technological uncertainties, and their attendant risks, that are inherent to technoscientific cutting-edge enterprises. Given their centrality, these genre assemblages function as essential infrastructure for the U.S. national laboratory system and for big science endeavors in general. In conclusion, this article argues that documentation that mitigates uncertainty serves an important infrastructural function for organizational life more generally.

Drawing on a three-year ethnographically oriented study exploring contemporary professional social work writing, this article focuses on a key concern: the amount of time taken up with writing, or "paperwork." We explore the relationship between time and professional social work writing in three key ways: (a) as a discrete, measurable phenomenon--how much time is spent on writing? (b) as a textual dimension to social work writing--how do institutional documents drive particular entextualizations of time and how do social worker texts entextualize time? (c) as a particular timespace configuration of lived experience--how is time experienced by professional social workers? Findings indicate that a dominant institutional chronotope is governing social work textual practice underpinned by an ideology of writing that is at odds with social workers' desired practice and professional goals. Methodologically, this article illustrates the value of combining a range of data and analytic tools, using textual and contextual data as well as qualitative and quantitative frames of analysis.

This article reports on the second stage of a 7-year community-based research project involving service-learning students in technical and professional communication courses and nonprofit organizations in Baltimore City. The article explains how students and community members overcame failure to collaborate on literacy and employment workshops. To assess collaboration, researchers integrated usability testing on workshop resources with 15 (N = 15) participants, postworkshop questionnaires with 34 (N = 34) participants, and interviews with 2 (N = 2) community partners. Participants responded positively, and 47% of workshop attendees found jobs. The article argues that community-based research should use participatory and iterative models and resilience theory.

As people today use information products in contexts with distractions, we need to design for people's attention. User experience design routinely relies on behavioral design to engage distracted users and nudge them toward specific behavior. Although practiced in user experience design, behavioral design is less known in technical communication. In this article, we use the CHOICES (Context, Habits, Other people, Incentives, Congruence, Emotions, and Salience) framework developed by McKinsey's Behavioral Lab to introduce students to learn about behavioral design principles that make use of cognitive biases to influence people. We maintain that behavioral design is useful for technical communicators because they create digital assets that are part of the user experience.

This article uses personas to illustrate the range of technical communication knowledge work developed through its practitioners--to articulate the functions, characteristics, traits, skills, and workplace styles of positions someone in the field might pursue. Recent research has provided valuable data about the expanding and evolving skill sets of the technical/professional communicator. We build on that by triangulating the data from an analysis of job postings, a survey of technical communicators, and interviews and embedded observations of practitioners to develop personas of technical/professional communicators on the job. The personas can help students, programs, and practitioners understand and navigate the many types of roles that are available in the field.

This article reports on the first stage of a mixed-methods community-based research project involving residents of a socioeconomically challenged neighborhood in Baltimore City, Richnor Springs, and service-learning students in technical and professional communication courses at Loyola University Maryland (Loyola). To measure outcomes, we analyzed student surveys from 80 respondents and critical reflections from two students. We also analyzed interviews from two students and two community members. Findings indicate that there were no statistical mean differences in the educational experiences between service-learning and nonservice-learning students; however, there were significant mean differences in transformational experiences. Findings also indicate that community members responded positively and that stakeholders valued the personal relationships that developed.

In this study, a Scientific Communication Curriculum (SCC) was designed for middle school students and teachers to equip them with scientific communication (SC) skills, and the skills included in the SCC were integrated into the middle school lessons. Within the framework of the Curriculum Design Research (CDR), designing the Scientific Communication Curriculum (SCC) and integrating into the lessons were conducted by two cycles and each cycle consisted of four stages; analysis, design, implementation, and evaluation. In the first cycle, SCC was developed and implemented for the evaluating the effectiveness of the SCC in terms of teaching scientific communication skills to the students with the help of Information Technology (IT) course teacher. In the second cycle, the scientific communication skills were integrated into the lessons in collaboration with the teachers and the School Librarian (SL). As a part of the design process, the Teacher Training Program (TTP) was organized to equip all middle school teachers with scientific communication skills and to help them how to teach and how to integrate the SC skills. Furthermore the TTP served as a professional development component of the CDR framework. Based on the quasi-experimental study results and also opinions of the students and the IT teacher towards the first implementation stage, it was concluded that the SCC was effective in equipping students with scientific communication skills. Regarding the findings from the second cycle, the integration process was satisfying for the teachers and the SL. Teachers found the TTP helpful for their professional development. According to views of the teachers and the SL on the integration process was a positive and useful step for them. The results of this study were addressed and discussed under the headings of design principles, curriculum components, and professional development that are components of the CDR model.

The purpose of this article is to assist classroom teachers in discerning qualitative differences between a student-written report and student-led research. There are many connotations to the terms "report" and "research," and they can have implications on how teachers effectively or ineffectively differentiate instruction to challenge students who have high academic ability. In this article, we present what we coin the "Report-Research Continuum" (R-RC), which is a differentiation decision-making tool for selecting student projects of varied levels of complexity. We also discuss the benefits of student-led reports and research and how they align with national standards. After reading this article, teachers will have an expanded understanding of similarities and differences between the terms "report" and "research" and will be able to use the R-RC to guide their selection of appropriately challenging projects that align with students' readiness levels and interest areas.

We developed a comprehensive training module for the undergraduates majoring in chemical education with a simple microfluidic experiment. The students were required to read a scientific reference offered by the instructor, then design and implement a microfluidic experiment for real sample analysis by making some modifications to the method described in the reference. Finally, the students were required to evaluate the analytical results with a standard method and write an experimental report. This reading-designing-implementing-evaluating-writing (RDIEW) module aims to enhance the students' experimental skills as well as their abilities at designing experiments and reading English scientific literature. More importantly, the concept of microfluidic analysis was successfully introduced to the undergraduates majoring in chemical education by this training module, which may facilitate the introduction of microfluidic devices to chemistry courses at high schools. This 1 week (3 h per day) module was developed for the undergraduates majoring in chemical education at the sixth semester. The feedback from the students indicated that the learning objectives of this training module were met.

This review summarizes primary studies on teachers' preferences and perceptions of the psychological report. A systematic search identified 19 studies meeting the inclusion criteria. These studies were evaluated in terms of (a) psychological report section focus, (b) methodology, (c) research results, (d) discussion, and (e) recommendations. Across the 19 studies, 1,309 general and special education teachers indicated and rated their preferences and perceptions of the psychological report. In terms of the entire psychological report and especially the report recommendations, teachers preferred longer, descriptive, and more detailed reports. Teachers preferred reports that provided enough detail to aid in individualized education planning and recommendation and intervention implementation. Teachers also preferred reports written in integrated theme-based formats as opposed to test-by-test formats. Teachers rated the level of detail and degree of psychological jargon used in reports as currently unsatisfactory. This review summarizes teacher preferences and identifies report features that aid in report comprehension and also provides a research basis from which to inform training and practice in psychological report writing.