Bridging Rhetoric and Engineering: Qualitative Results from a Writing Center Program to Improve Engineering Undergraduate Writing

The lengthy laboratory reports required by upper-division engineering courses typically challenge undergraduates, who may find themselves unprepared to exercise both technical and writing skills together. This paper draws from the results of a multidisciplinary collaboration that trains Writing Center consultants in engineering writing skills. We built on research in "writing transfer" and STEM students, and we engaged in a debate in Writing Center literature over the value of specialist vs. non-specialist consultants. Here, we focus on one intervention in Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE). Students and consultants received training aligned with classroom teaching for a technical writing assignment. Then, students worked with trained consultants on a draft of their assignment. In addition to completing a quantitative analysis of improvements in student self-efficacy and writing in the intervention, our team collected student responses about the students ’ prior backgrounds in technical writing and their experiences working with the Writing Center consultants. Student comments were used for our qualitative data. This qualitative study discusses the results of our open-coding and concept-driven analyses of written comments by the ECE students. Including student voices in our evaluation offered insights into the students ’ positive experiences bridging academic disciplines with a trained consultant.