Abstract:

Student writing in STEM has been shown to lack elements of effective communication and persuasive strategies. However, STEM professions need graduates who are able to write clearly. Writing tutors are one low-cost resource often used to help students improve their writing. This is not a new resource. However, writing tutors often believe they lack the skills to tutor STEM writing, and STEM students often believe tutors cannot help them if they are not content experts.

Writing assignment tutor training in STEM (WATTS) is an innovative model that, when implemented with fidelity, has been shown to improve student writing. Through work funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) (award nos. 2013467, 2013496, and 2013541), researchers at multiple institutions collaborated to study this low-cost, high-impact resource. WATTS was developed through many iterations over time and enhances the relationships between the STEM instructor and the writing tutor supervisor, who meet and conduct the tutor-training together [1]. Tutors leave the training with resources that help them build confidence and provide concrete, useful feedback to help STEM students improve their writing. Synergistic collaborations between tutor supervisors, tutors, and STEM content instructors foster relationships and build communities of practice that have lasting impacts beyond the student writing, including improvements in tutor self-efficacy and student perceptions of the value of tutoring.

One area still being explored is the impact of WATTS on institutional change. Institutional change does not happen quickly but can happen when communities of practice facilitate activities and relationships that are iterative, design-based, and can bring sustained structural and cultural change to an organization [2-4]. This team designed a self-sustaining model for institutional change by applying Kang et al.'s (2022) Design-Based Change Model to WATTS [5].

This presentation will discuss the experiences of building the WATTS institutional change model, communities of practice, theories of change and how they inform this work, and the application of the model that will be used to measure the institutional change at four institutions.

Participants will leave with an understanding of how to build communities of practice and begin transforming the culture at their own institutions, one report at a time.

Keywords:

Writing assignments, tutor training, STEM writing, communities of practice, institutional change.