“Developing Curriculum for a Multi-Course Interdepartmental Learning Community to Promote Retention and Learning for Underprepared Engineering Students”

by Rachel A. Milloy, Matthew Moberly, and Rebecca Powell | Xchanges 9.1

Collaborative Curriculum Design for Learner Independence

With our underprepared student population in mind, we re-designed English 111 to address the needs of ILC learners. In Learner-Centered Teaching: Five Key Changes to Practice, Maryellen Weimer claims, “If students develop as learners incrementally, then the assumption is that assignments, activities, events, indeed, courses can be sequenced so that the order in which they are experienced expedites growth” (171). Based on Grow’s four stages of the developmental process, Weimer suggests that assignment sequencing can move students from “dependence to self-direction” and “encourage the growth and development of learning skills and learners” (168-169). By adapting existing English 111 writing assignments for the ILC and SMET 101 learning objectives, we created a writing course that encourages active participation from students, allows students to build relationships with peers through collaboration, and investigates real world engineering problems through multiple disciplinary perspectives. Students work through four learning units that serve as scaffolds for success and lead to “more complex levels of learning” (Weimer 172).

Instructional scaffolding in the ILC English 111 course aids students in developing new writing and engineering knowledge and problem-solving skills. While working through each learning unit, students strive to become active participants in their own learning; they learn to collaborate with peers and instructors through problem-based learning and develop critical thinking skills that allow them to work independently when identifying, analyzing, and creating disciplinary arguments. Students must work through each learning unit with assistance from their instructor and peers but also depend on their own prior knowledge to successfully complete assigned tasks. In English 111, our goal is to facilitate students’ development as writers and future engineers so that they become more independent learners capable of meeting the demands of college courses and the writing tasks common in engineering professions.

To best prepare our students for future academic and professional writing tasks, the four learning units in the ILC English 111 course support the learning goals of English 111 and SMET 101. In addition to reading texts that explore issues in engineering and examining writing as a process, students learn to view writing as a scene of investigation, as a way to describe problems, and as a way to brainstorm solutions to problems (collaboratively and independently). These reading practices support students in completing the following major assignments within each unit:

• Unit 1: Application to a Research Track Memo
• Unit 2: Rhetorical Analysis of an Engineering Argument
• Unit 3: Writing as an Engineer Website Project
• Unit 4: A Documented Argument Essay on an Engineering Issue