Writing Assignment Tutor Training in STEM (WATTS)
The Writing Assignment Tutor Training in STEM (WATTS) program is a sustainable, interdisciplinary intervention that capitalizes on existing resources to improve student writing in STEM fields. The need for improvement in undergraduate STEM writing skills, especially in engineering fields, is widely recognized [1]. However, several factors make addressing it difficult—the increased demand to teach more specialized content in fewer credit hours, faculty lack of expertise to address students’ writing, and the significant underestimation by students of the amount of writing that will be required in their future positions.
WATTS is a targeted training session for peer writing tutors that is collaboratively taught by a STEM instructor and tutor supervisor. It is being evaluated for its impact on all involved stakeholders: students, tutors, instructors, and tutor supervisors.
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Nos. 2013467, 2013496, 2013541.
Feel free to contact us with questions about the poster session.
2022 IUSE Summit Poster Presentation Participants | ||
Robert Weissbach | IUPUI | |
Ruth Pflueger | Penn State Behrend | |
Jonathan Meckley | Penn State Behrend | |
Corinne Renguette | IUPUI | |
Brandon Sorge | IUPUI | |
Annwesa Dasgupta | University of Mississippi | |
Immanuel Edinbarough | The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley | |
Marlene Galvan | The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley | |
Magdalena Flores | The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley | |
Matthew Rothrock | IUPUC | |
Johanna Bodenhamer | IUPUI |
Assessment of Student Writing
We are in year two of three (2020-2023). We have collected three phases of student writing:
- Baseline: students did not visit a tutor
- Control: students visited a non-WATTS-trained tutor
- Experimental: students visited a WATTS-trained tutor
We assessed each phase using a modified AAC&U VALUE Written Communication Rubric [2].