| 1. |
- Negretti, Raffaella, 1971, et al.
(author)
-
Writing at work: Transfer of genre knowledge to research writing in the medical field
- 2018
-
Conference paper (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Transfer is often defined in terms of “transfer of knowledge” and “knowledge transformation” (Donahue, 2016). Transfer is a complex concept, operationalized as “near” vs. “far” transfer—referring to the proximity between context and tasks, and “high-road” vs. “low-road” transfer—referring to the amount of deliberate abstraction and search for connection that the transfer situation requires (Perkins & Salomon, 1992). In connection to writing, transfer entails a definition of what writing knowledge is (Donahue, 2016). We conceptualize this knowledge as “genre knowledge” (Tardy, 2009); in genre theory transfer often designates autonomy and the ability to make deliberate authorial choices across writing genres and tasks. Specifically, we investigate metacognition and its role in students’ ability to transfer and adapt genre knowledge to research writing tasks. The metacognitive facet of transfer has surfaced repeatedly in genre pedagogy (Artemeva & Fox, 2010; Reiff and Bawarshi, 2011), and as Anson & Moore emphatically stress in their recent work, “transfer happens through awareness and metacognition” (2016, p.333, emphasis in the original). This poster presents part of the data collected over 2 years in a longitudinal project on writing transfer in a Scandinavian university of technology, involving doctoral students in various scientific and technical disciplines. Our question is: How do students transfer the genre knowledge developed through a genre-based writing course? We present the preliminary results obtained from doctoral students in the medical field, who therefore “write at work” as they engage in research writing. Our data comes from interviews conducted with these professionals 6 months to a year after the conclusion of the course. The emerging picture is that genre analysis, especially if aimed at highlighting conventions but also variation, often becomes a tool in the writing process, i.e. a cognitive strategy used particularly in the planning phases of the writing endeavour. These tools—ranging from textual skills such as paragraphing to voice and stance markers, to conventional rhetorical patterns and moves—suggest metacognition and high-road transfer: (genre) knowledge is applied flexibly. Depending on their goals and readers’ expectations, writers make deliberate and autonomous choices. Several students reported an increased sense of control and efficiency, and—not trivially—an increased sense of enjoyment in writing. Anson, C. & Moore, J. (Eds.) (2016). Critical Transitions: Writing and the Question of Transfer. The WAC Clearinghouse. http://wac.colostate.edu/books/ansonmoore/ Artemeva, N. & Fox, J. (2010). Awareness vs. production: Probing students’ antecedent genre knowledge. Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 24,476-515. doi:10.1177/1050651910371302 Donahue, C. (2016). Writing and Global Transfer Narratives: Situating the Knowledge Transformation Conversation. In Anson, C., & Moore, J. (Eds.), Critical Transitions: Writing and the Question of Transfer (pp. 107-136). Perkins, D. N., & Salomon, G. (1992). Transfer of Learning. International Encyclopedia of Education, 2, 6452-6457. Reiff, M. J., & Bawarshi, A. (2011). Tracing discursive resources: How students use prior genre knowledge to negotiate new writing contexts in first-year composition. Written Communication, 28(3), 312-337. Tardy, C. M. (2009). Building Genre Knowledge. West Lafayette, IN: Parlor Press.
|
|
| 2. |
- Gustafsson, Magnus, 1965, et al.
(author)
-
Catching Another Wave: WAC at the Graduate Level
- 2014
-
In: nternational Writing Across the Curriculum Conference June 12-14, 2014: "Shifting Currents/Making Waves".
-
Conference paper (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Over the past four decades, the Writing-Across-the-Curriculum movement has grown steadily outward from its initial stronghold within liberal arts colleges and state institutions with a strong teaching mission to institutions as diverse in their missions as community colleges and research-intensive universities (McLeod & Soven, 1992; Palmquist et al., 1995; Walvoord, 1996). One constant during this period of growth has been a programmatic focus on undergraduate learning and teaching. It’s clear, of course, that undergraduate students have not been the only beneficiaries of the WAC movement. Graduate students have sought advice from WAC workshops for students and have taken advantage of the services offered through writing centers, OWLs, writing fellows programs, and other writing-focused instructional resources. Similarly, faculty and post-docs (including both native speakers of English and non-native speakers) have benefited from professional development and, in some institutions, support for the development of their own writing skills. Yet it seems fair to suggest that these groups, and in particular graduate students and post-docs, have not been viewed as a primary audience by the vast majority of WAC programs. It would appear, however, that this is beginning to change. Although concerns about graduate student communication skills is not new, we are seeing increased attention over the past decade to this issue, with a number of WAC and writing programs launching efforts to enhance the communication skills of graduate students (e.g., Aranha, 2009; Channock, 2007; Hass and Osborn, 2007; Jordan & Kedrowicz, 2011; Simpson, 2012, 2013) and, at some institutions, particularly those with significant numbers of post-docs who are not native speakers of English, post-docs. Some of these efforts have been directed at thesis writing, others have addressed concerns rooted in multilingual concerns, and still others have responded to more general concerns about how we might help graduate students and post-docs make the transition to full participation in their disciplines and professions. In this roundtable, the speakers and audience will reflect on WAC initiatives directed toward graduate students and post-docs. One speaker will address efforts to support international multilingual graduate students and post-docs. Those efforts have, to date, involved (1) assessing the language and literacy backgrounds and needs of international graduate students and post-docs, and the faculty who work with them and (2) initiating the design of workshops, writing courses, and a peer-tutoring program. Another speaker will reflect on efforts to support graduate students in STEM disciplines through writing center initiatives and faculty professional development. A third speaker will report on the results of a two-year pilot project, involving team-taught communications courses and thesis writing groups, that is intended to create a university-wide program targeted at graduate students. The presentations at the roundtable are intended to be roughly half the length of a standard panel presentation. Following the presentations, the members of the panel will call attention to common themes running through the presentations and invite members of the audience to join them in a discussion of directions that might be pursued in WAC initiatives directed to graduate students as well as post-docs.
|
|
| 3. |
- Gustafsson, Magnus, 1965
(author)
-
EMI and Assumptions about Language Proficiency: PROFiLE and Language in the Disciplines
- 2016
-
In: http://eapconference.misis.ru/programme/keynote-sessions.
-
Conference paper (other academic/artistic)abstract
- EMI comes with assumptions of increased language proficiency. But what is this incidental language proficiency increase really like if you are in an EMI-context in an EFL-country where English is not the everyday context? And does the incidental language learning obtained in English-speaking contexts even promote learning? Or is it the mobility we are mainly after as it were? At Chalmers university of technology, we have been involved in a three-year project to study incidental language proficiency improvement in EMI-programmes. I will try to report back on these programme students’ development and compare the EMI-approach to our integrated approach in order to discuss some of the challenges of both approaches.
|
|
| 4. |
- Gustafsson, Magnus, 1965, et al.
(author)
-
Peer-review-based examination in a PhD-level course: ”Introduction to Research” at the Sahlgrenska Academy, Gothenburg University, Sweden
- 2016
-
In: International Writing Across the Curriculum, Ann Arbor 2016.
-
Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Early during PhD education, the Sahlgrenska Academy students across the health sciences take the course ”Introduction to Research” aimed to i) integrate the teaching of Theory of Science, Research Ethics, Research Methodology, Scientific Communication, and Information Retrieval using one, integrated examination assignment, and ii) utilize the different backgrounds and research areas of the students for peer development. Groups of four PhD students conduct a peer-review process comprising each student’s research plan with a commentary reflecting on the course subjects in relation to each student’s project. Workshops are provided to support the writing and peer-review processes. After three weeks of classroom-based teaching, students update their research plan and write a reflective commentary. Each student peer-reviews the documents of their group peers, giving feedback on content, style, and organization. For the final revision, students thus have to consider the feedback of three peers. Each student evaluates her/his own performance and learning, peer-review skills, feedback received, research plan improvements, and the group’s work.We evaluate the outcome of the examination assignment by analysis of the PhD students’ written reflections that are part of the assignment. Students appreciate the opportunity to re-evaluate their research plan and get multi-perspective feedback on it. They also find writing the commentary challenging and that the research plans get more realistic and structured. The literature on peer response as a learning activity is substantial but there is less work published on PhD-peer processes to promote learning and we hope this presentation offers a venue to explore such a discussion.
|
|
| 5. |
- Gustafsson, Magnus, 1965, et al.
(author)
-
The challenges and benefits of criterion-based assessment: combining feedback channels and exploring criterion-based supervision
- 2014
-
In: The challenges and benefits of criterion-based assessment: combining feedback channels and exploring criterion-based supervision.
-
Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- This presentation combines the findings from two studies. One study compares students’ experiences criteria-based assessment via in-text commentary and rubric-articulated feedback in an assessment design combining the two feedback channels. We use students’ responses to inform possible ways of optimizing feedback strategies for formative assessment. Categories of student responses from three sources are discussed: reflective texts, a questionnaire, and interviews. Results indicate that students attributed different functions to the two feedback channels: in-text commentary to later-order concerns related to language proficiency, and rubric-articulated feedback to higher-order concerns related to an overview of writing achievement. The second study investigates adapting supervision for greater impact of university-wide guidelines and criteria for MSc and Bachelor of Engineering theses. The study involves a faculty-training group at MSc and BEng levels and an analysis of the work supervisors and students have been doing to interpret criteria and thus contextualize them for their projects. Findings indicate that isolated supervisors have little sense of the potential of the criteria and that a collegial discussion is crucial to generate understanding and supporting activities.Both studies exemplify how internalization of a discipline’s standard is often insufficient and how a revised supervision process promotes student ownership and their informed engagement in thesis/assignment quality. So, while presenting the findings in terms of the initial interpretation of criteria among students and faculty is important, the presentation also needs to address the learning oriented interventions of revised supervision practices. The presentation, therefore, ends on some ‘lessons learned’ and synergy effects of a combination of reading seminars, in-text commentary, and rubric-articulated feedback for formative purposes. We also discuss current assessment designs and potential improvement to these towards. We hope this discussion is relevant to WRAB colleagues.
|
|
| 6. |
- Gustafsson, Magnus, 1965
(author)
-
Using threshold concepts for testing disciplinary discourse literacy
- 2016
-
In: Conference on College Composition and Communication; Responsible Action: International Higher Education Writing Research Exchange.
-
Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Responsible Action: International Higher Education Writing Research ExchangeIs a pre-publication workshop for international research at CCCC and texts are screened by the organisers and subsequently discussed among participants for further revision or new research directions.This text and the study is is drawn from focuses on the threshold concept 'reactive power' and the how students of electrical power engineering (MSc) articulate their understanding of it in conversations. The articulation of the threshold concept is at times very difficult to understand for supervisors and at times indicative of significant misunderstanding.
|
|
| 7. |
- Gustafsson, Magnus, 1965, et al.
(author)
-
What is the impact of integrating language and content in higher education (ICLHE) and how do you study it?
- 2014
-
In: Higher Education Close Up Research Making a Difference Lancaster University, UK. 21st - 23rd July 2014.
-
Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Recognised under different terms in our respective higher education contexts, the notion of integrating communication development alongside content knowledge development in disciplinary courses has seen increasing application since the late 90s. We talk of ICLHE in Europe, WID in US contexts, or use the partially overlapping phrase CLIL for ‘content and language integrated learning’. Support for integrating writing development into content area courses draws from the literature in educational development and research literature from various points of view including situated learning, cognitive apprenticeship, constructive alignment, disciplinary discourse, graduate profiles, and even from policy perspectives as the Bologna agreement or certification standards. Despite this support and the growing importance if ICLHE, it seems we have not really established a reliable way of measuring the impact of integrating the teaching and learning of communication with the teaching and learning of domain knowledge. Have we even defined what impact is it that we seek and what didactic approaches we should be comparing with?The Saunders think piece poses a critical challenge with its critical set of implicit questions, and we believe our list of questions offers a project-specific adaptation of this challenge: •What outcomes and outputs are we measuring?•What outcomes and outputs should we be measuring? •For whom or from what vantage point do we assess ICLHE?•Who ends up using the research and how does that promote HE?•How and when do we measure?•How do we define what an ‘effective’ intervention is?•What are the baselines we measure against?These questions seek to explore both what is happening now in ICLHE assessment and what can and should be happening. They address the kinds of learning outcomes ICLHE might support for students, the kinds of writing products and textual / discourse artefacts we should be examining in our assessments, the ways in which those products and artefacts should be measured and analysed, and, ultimately, the ends to which our assessment should be directed. The presentation opens on brief descriptions of necessary settings and a short definitional section before offering examples of ICLHE interventions that require assessment. However, the structural intention of the presentation is to set aside as much time as feasibly possible to participant generated discussion around this challenging cluster of issues. We hope that we can jointly explore new avenues by drawing on our different contexts and perspectives and the different research designs and approaches that grow out these.
|
|
| 8. |
- Gustafsson, Magnus, 1965, et al.
(author)
-
An Exploratory Study Mapping Approaches to Teaching Writing in Engineering
- 2023
-
In: IEEE International Professional Communication Conference. ; 2023-July, s. 44-48
-
Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Approaches to teaching writing to engineers vary widely across institutions, from standalone courses housed in English departments to fully integrated writing-in-the-disciplines programs, as well as a range of models in between that represent partnerships between writing and technical faculty. But little is known about how widely each approach is used, who is responsible for instruction, or what the overall goals are. In this exploratory study, we present an initial meta-analysis to map current approaches to engineering writing instruction by analyzing papers presented at American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) conferences between 2012 and 2022. This exploratory study is a first step in a larger mapping project designed to better understand not only how engineering writing is taught and, perhaps more importantly, what approaches to engineering writing instruction are effective in what contexts and why. Such mapping can facilitate a deeper dialogues locally, nationally, and globally about the strengths and limitations of various approaches.
|
|
| 9. |
|
|
| 10. |
- Eriksson, Andreas, 1973, et al.
(author)
-
Collaborating to constructively align writing assignments on engineering master's programmes
- 2017
-
In: 5th ICLHE conference (Integrating Content and Language in Higher Education).
-
Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- PROFiLE is a three-university project investigating the alleged incidental effects on English professional literacy in EMI-education. This sub-project in PROFiLE encompasses mapping writing assignment and writing development in twointernational master’s programmes of engineering. The observational mapping stage evolved into an interventional study and material presented here stems from teachers at the programmes not being satisfied with texts written by students on courses on the programmes. This dissatisfaction prompted discussion with course managers and analysis of course material. These dialogues and analyses revealedthat instructions for assignments were vague, did not highlight teacher expectations, and that crucial features were not obvious to the students. The challenges involved e.g. selection of content, articulating the understanding of core theory, comments about how results should be interpreted, and the presentation of results in figures and tables.Our results show that student texts improved in many ways at the same time as students considered the assignments relevant for assessing the expected learning outcomes. The sub-project shows how student writing in an EMI-context can be improved through collaboration between content and communication staff on the alignment of learning outcomes, activities, task descriptions, and disciplinary expectations.The redesign processes also show that expectations change as students move into master’s level and that criteria and task descriptions have to capture expectations of disciplinary discourse that students have not necessarily been expected to meet before. Our studies show that teachers at master’s level may need support in the unpacking of these disciplinary expectations and when they get this type of support they are able to address challenges in such a way that it promotes student performance. In many mixed ICLHE and EMI contexts, one of the great challenges is therefore to unpack course and disciplinary expectations and to make these explicit and tangible to students.
|
|
