March 2014

COMMUNITIES: EDUCATION
Getting it Write

Michigan Tech offers unique training to improve student communication skills.

Twice a year, Michigan Tech’s mechanical engineering department welcomes members of its industry advisory board to campus. When the managers from companies such as Ford, Toyota, and Boeing arrive, they often discuss what they look for in workers.

Although technical skills are important, the advisory board members stress that what really distinguishes applicants are communication skills, says Nancy Barr, technical communications advisor in the mechanical engineering–engineering mechanics department.

But with roughly 1,100 undergraduates, lab classes in the department must employ teaching assistants to grade reports. Those grades haven’t always been consistent. In addition, many of the TAs are nonnative English speakers who lack confidence in grading writing. To help boost the confidence of the TAs, ensure students receive effective feedback, and improve student communications skills, the department has started a training program that focuses on clear, concise writing.

Barr, a former newspaper reporter and editor and the author of three mystery novels, started work at Michigan Tech seven years ago in an administrative role. But she knew she could offer the department more. She began helping mechanical engineering faculty and graduate students by editing proposals and journal papers, then looked at how to assist undergraduates.

Although she recently finished a master’s degree in rhetoric and technical communication and is now pursuing a PhD, Barr realized that she couldn’t address all the department’s needs alone. “I train the trainers,” she says.

The training she developed is based on Writing Across the Curriculum training sessions for faculty. Barr’s version consists of three one- to two-hour training sessions and two group discussion sessions. Barr also collaborated with faculty and teaching assistants to develop lab report guidelines and grading rubrics.

In the training, TAs learn the importance of teaching technical communication skills, their role as educators, how to use the rubrics and guidelines, types of feedback that are most helpful to students, and ways to provide that in the least amount of time.

About 20 TAs have taken the training since it launched in fall 2012. It is required for all teaching assistants assigned to one of the three undergraduate lab classes in the department and optional for those working in engineering design process classes. So far, all of those TAs have chosen to take the training.

Barr says the program gives graduate students confidence and empowers them. Without the rubrics, the TAs tended to be generous with grades, she explains, doubting their evaluation skills. “If students are turning in substandard work but getting a good grade, they’re not learning,” she says. The rubrics also save time and reduce arguments. “A TA can say, ‘You’re not happy with your grade, but clearly it falls into this category.’”

Feedback from the grad students has been “overwhelmingly positive,” Barr says. “No one has said it’s a waste of time and they wish they hadn’t done it. A lot said they wish they could’ve gotten the training sooner.”

PhD student Ranjeeth Naik took the training in 2012 and says it makes the life of a teaching assistant efficient. In the mechanical engineering lab he teaches, students see three different TAs in a semester, he explains, so the training and rubric also ensure responses are more uniform.

Most of the graduate students are teaching for the first time, he continues. “Teaching is fun for a new TA when some of the fears of teaching for the first time are removed. It makes the whole teaching process more enjoyable.”

Although Barr says all the kinks haven’t been worked out yet, survey responses from students in the third- and fourth-year labs have indicated an improvement in TAs’ ability to provide effective feedback.

In spring 2015, a formal assessment will compare current senior design reports with those from before the training to determine whether there was a marked improvement in students’ ability to write clearly and concisely.

Curriculum revision in the mechanical engineering department will also broaden the type of assignments TAs evaluate to those such as presentations and journaling.

In the meantime, Michigan Tech’s Center for Teaching and Learning has adapted some of the training to use with TAs across the university.