Speaker
Description
A common observation of physics faculty and professionals hiring physics graduates is that undergraduate students have deficient physics-specific writing skills. Underlying issues include the fact that students are not often exposed to authentic writing experiences as part of their curriculum, and physics faculty may not feel qualified to teach writing. Scholarship focused on writing transfer, defined as the ability to apply the writing skills and knowledge learned in one context in a new writing context, suggests that students need support with transfer-focused writing skills such as genre and audience awareness and that these are skills that students can be trained in. I will discuss an interdisciplinary effort, by faculty of physics and writing studies, to develop a writing in physics curriculum, using a scaffolded approach and threshold concepts from writing studies, such as genre, audience, and purpose. Students are given the methodological tools to approach writing, and the instruction includes structured peer feedback that is connected to the instructor's feedback and grading. This has led to improvements in the written and oral communication skills of students in a broad range of genres and for various audiences. Course materials developed for this effort are publicly available to the community.
