Final Report of the CUP Subcommittee on the Communication Requirement

2. Subcommittee Activities

The Subcommittee began meeting in the Fall of 1997. It adopted the following general design principles articulated in the original 1997 report to the Faculty by the Committee on the Writing Requirement proposing a new Communication Requirement

• Instruction in writing and speaking should develop abilities in both general and technical exposition and should be integrated across all schools of the Institute, in both a student's major and in the General Institute Requirements.

• Experience and instruction in both writing and speaking should occur in each of the four years of the undergraduate program and should be accompanie with frequent and timely feedback from qualified instructors.

• The responsibility of integrating writing and speaking into the undergraduate program should be shared by all schools and departments.

• Oversight of this new curriculum should consist of flexible collaborations between an Institute-wide committee and individual schools and departments.

• The Institute should provide adequate financial and human resources to ensure the effectiveness of the Requirement.

Professor Rosalind H. Williams, Dean of Students and Undergraduate Education and Principal Investigator for National Science Foundation Grant DUE 9653732, "Developing a Communication-Intensive Undergraduate Curriculum in Science, Mathematics, Engineering, and Technology," delegated substantial authority to the Subcommittee Co-chairs to disperse funds from this award. The grant was specifically solicited to support the Faculty initiative to develop a communication-intensive curriculum. This support, along with other financial support from the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, the Office of the Dean of Students and Undergraduate Education, and the Barker Foundation, was crucial in developing and maintaining the pilot programs.

2.1 Summary of Communication-intensive Experiments

2.1.1 HASS Pilot Programs.

Beginning in Fall 1998, the HASS Overview Committee (HOC) initiated experimental CI subjects within the HASS curriculum. Over the past three terms, over 300 students have taken these HASS CI subjects. In October 1999, the HASS Overview Committee concluded in its review of the HASS curriculum that there is "hard and convincing evidence for the success of the HASS CI experiment." Excerpts from the HOC Review, including student survey data and summaries of discussions by HASS Faculty teaching CI HASS subjects, are included in Appendix F of this report.

2.1.2 Departmental Pilot Projects and Experiments: Descriptions of Representative Projects.

The diversity, ingenuity, and effectiveness of departmental initiatives confirmed the wisdom of decentralizing the development of a communication-intensive curriculum. Of the 16 pilot projects in 11 departments, 10 were evaluated by the faculty involved as significantly improving student communication skills. Some of these projects are already serving as models for instruction at other universities. The following are brief descriptions of some representative projects. (A complete list of these projects with summary evaluations appears in Appendix D.)

• Laboratory tutorials in mechanical engineering. Working with Professor John Heywood, the Undergraduate Writing Cooperative has begun intensive group tutorials for students writing laboratory reports in 2.672, the mechanical engineering project laboratory. In addition, instruction in speaking and teamwork skills is a regular part of the Course 2 undergraduate curriculum.

• Tutorials in oral presentation and writing in Architecture design subjects. Students in all senior design seminars participate in tutorials conducted by the Undergraduate Writing Cooperative staff from the Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies. In these tutorials, students practice their design presentations, review videotapes of the presentation with the tutor, and revise their written design reports.

• Writing clinics in 6.021J. In Quantitative Physiology: Cells and Tissues, Professor Dennis Freeman has established writing clinics connected to the two large required laboratory reports. These two clinics are staffed by Professor Freeman and his TA's, with additional support from an instructor from the Undergraduate Writing Cooperative. In addition, Professor Freeman has integrated short writing assignments into the subject's weekly problem sets.

• The Biology Undergraduate Journal and intensive instruction in writing and speaking in Project Laboratory subjects. The Biology Department's initiative, led by Professor Paul Matsudaira and assisted by staff from the Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies, has developed several highly successful and innovative programs. Instruction, practice, and substantial feedback in both writing and speaking are now fully integrated within the junior year project laboratory. Project lab faculty report a dramatic improvement from prior years in both student written reports and oral presentations. Plans are underway to develop a similar but more modest instructional model for the first Biology laboratory subject, 7.02, taken by over 20% of undergraduates at MIT.

  The Biology department's most successful and visible initiative has been the Biology Undergraduate Journal, created and edited by Professor Matsudaira. By making writing a normal and regular outcome of undergraduate research, the Biology department has extended the basic approach and philosophy of the UROP program to the teaching of writing. Students no longer view scientific writing as a chore to be completed for graduation but rather as an opportunity for them to display their research efforts in an authentic and highly motivating context.

• Tutorials and papers in subjects in advanced quantum physics. In Spring 1998, Professor Robert Jaffe began requiring all undergraduate students to write a theoretical paper in the advanced undergraduate Quantum Physics subject, 8.059. Physics graduate students were trained as tutors to help students revise their drafts, and students were also trained to peer-review each other's papers. The practice was repeated in Spring 1999, and now has become a regular feature of the class. The physics faculty reports that the overall quality of the student papers has been excellent.

2.1.3 Findings

• In some departments, particularly in the School of Engineering, instruction and practice in written and oral communication is already a central and vital part of the major program. (A list of existing communication activities appears in Appendix E.)

• Integrating writing and speaking into undergraduate scientific and technical majors is feasible, and can be done without substantially increasing faculty workload. Indeed, in some cases, having students review and revise drafts before submitting reports to staff teaching scientific and technical subjects may slightly reduce the workload of some faculty.

• In many cases, instructional staff in CI science and engineering subjects require additional help from staff trained to teach writing and speaking.

• Because graduate students are often involved in providing instruction and feedback in CI subjects, their training and supervision is crucial. Several effective models for training Graduate Teaching Assistants have been developed. These models, however, need to be further refined and expanded to provide thorough training and supervision for all graduate students and non-regular teaching staff involved in CI subjects.

• The content and pedagogical approaches of some technical and scientific subjects in each major make them easily transformable into CI classes. However, certain subjects in each major are probably not suited to such a redesign.

• There is no single model for integrating writing and speaking into courses. Rather, the most effective designs are defined through a subject's content, assignments, and overall educational goals.

• Faculty need access to an ongoing source of funding and other resources for the continual development and refinement of CI subjects.

2.2 Required Expository Writing In The First Year And Changes In The Freshman Essay Evaluation

Initiatives by departments to integrate writing into their subjects has drawn attention to the need for the proper sequencing of writing instruction within the undergraduate program. If faculty are going to require their students to write more, they need assurance that all of these students possess basic competency in writing. However, each year approximately 20% of the students in an entering class are identified by the Freshman Essay Evaluation as severely deficient in expository writing skills. Previously, these students received only a strong recommendation to enroll in a writing subject during their first year­a recommendation that most of them ignored. Instead, the majority of students in this group unsuccessfully tried to complete Phase One of the Writing Requirement by other means and finally took an expository writing class as juniors or seniors.

This group of students has long been a major impediment to making writing an integral component of the undergraduate curriculum. There have been consistent anecdotal reports from faculty in HASS, engineering, and science subjects that, although these students usually constitute only about one-fifth of a class, responding to their written assignments demands an excessive amount of faculty time. Furthermore, permitting these students to delay receiving instruction and practice in expository writing until near the end of their undergraduate careers is inefficient. Students end up taking a writing subject only when it will have the least effect on their undergraduate performance.

The Subcommittee concluded that requiring these students to take an expository writing subject during their first year at MIT is a critical first step in developing a communication-intensive curriculum. This policy not only presents a logical sequence of writing instruction, but it also encourages faculty to include more writing in their classes by ensuring that all of their students will possess a minimum level of competency. Furthermore, these benefits are achieved with almost no long-term increase in net cost. Because most of these students eventually take an expository writing subject, such a requirement will produce no long-term increase in overall enrollments, although there will be a transitional increase in enrollments for two to three years.

The Subcommittee and the Committee on the Writing Requirement then requested that the CUP sanction a two-year experiment that would require students displaying significant deficiencies in writing skills on the Freshman Essay Evaluation (previously receiving the designation "Not Acceptable- Subject Recommended") take an entry-level expository writing subject during their first year at the Institute. The CUP approved the request, and the experiment began in Fall 1999.

2.2.1 Changes in the Freshman Essay Evaluation

This experiment changed the function of the Freshman Essay Evaluation (FEE) from that of a diagnostic instrument making recommendations to a placement test requiring some students to take specific subjects. Consequently, the test needs to be both a reliable and valid measure of student writing. In 1998, acting on a suggestion from the Chair of the Committee on Undergraduate Admissions and Financial Aid (CUAFA), the Committee on the Writing Requirement experimented with giving the test online to students during the summer before they arrived at MIT. Because the online essay questions are now based on readings and students have the opportunity to revise their work, this format provides a closer approximation to undergraduate writing contexts at MIT. By its second year, the pilot had become the default, with 70% of the class taking the online evaluation.

2.2.2 Findings

The following conclusions can already be made from enrollment data and from a recent review of the FEE by the Committee on the Writing Requirement.

• Based on their performance on the FEE, students with significant deficiencies in writing are complying with the requirement to take an expository writing class during their first year at MIT. Of the 208 entering students receiving the score of Subject Required on the Freshman Essay Evaluation, 200 have either already taken one of the expository writing subjects in the Fall 1999 term or have preregistered for one for Spring 2000.
• Information about the revised requirement can be communicated clearly and concisely to advisors and students.
• The Online Freshman Essay Evaluation represents a significant improvement over the paper-and-pencil test of past years, and the procedures and administration of the test are essentially sound. (A summary of the recent review of the Online Freshman Essay Evaluation by the Committee on the Writing Requirement is contained in Appendix G.)

Although it is too early to assess the overall educational benefits of requiring weak writers to take an expository writing subject during their first year at MIT, these findings provide positive and encouraging preliminary data.
 

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Comments to CUP Subcommittee on the Communication Requirement
Last modified: February 14, 2000