9 February 2018: Seminar by Natasha Artemeva, Carleton University, Canada, "Assessing genre sensitivity: Undergraduate students’ writing in response to nested engineering contexts"
STEMTEC Seminar Series, 2018
Where: WT515C
When: Friday 9 February 2018, 2-3pm
ABSTRACT
Within a diagnostic assessment of entering undergraduate engineering students, developed for the purpose of identifying students’ needs for academic support (Fox, Haggerty & Artemeva, 2016), two disciplinary writing tasks were administered. One task, designed by drawing on input obtained from the Faculty of Engineering, required students to interpret graphs which displayed theoretical and actual data on an engineering innovation. This task was embedded in the first lecture of a required introductory engineering course (Fox & Artemeva, in press). The other task asked students to write an email in the context of a simulated work placement (such workplace integrated learning experiences are a part of their engineering program). 1500 student responses (i.e., all responses of the cohort of entering engineering students) were assessed using an analytic rubric, which included disciplinary (engineering) criteria. The written responses that are the focus of the present study were then selectively sampled from two groups: 10 from a group of students who had been identified through the diagnostic procedure as being in need of academic support; and 10 from a group who were not identified as such. Subsequently, student written responses to both tasks were analyzed by using genre analysis, and the outcomes were compared with diagnostic results obtained through the use of the analytic criteria on the diagnostic rubric. The findings suggest that genre analysis further expands useful information on students’ genre sensitivity in engineering contexts of communication, and their use (or misuse) of rhetorical strategies. Greater detail in what works or does not work in student writing allows for more targeted feedback and pedagogical support, which in turn may contribute to the students’ writing development.
Biography
Natasha Artemeva is Professor in the School of Linguistics and Language Studies, Carleton University, Canada. Her background includes an engineering degree and professional experience in engineering from Russia and Canada, which have informed her research on disciplinary and professional literacies in engineering and mathematics. She is a co-editor of Rhetorical Genre Studies and beyond (2006, Inkshed Publications), Writing in knowledge societies (2011, Parlor Press), and Genre Studies around the globe: Beyond the three traditions (2015, Inkshed Publications).