The Blogging of Fallon 746

Beyond first-year composition, the typical undergraduate mechanical engineering curriculum provides few opportunities to develop writing skills without a concerted effort by faculty to incorporate writing into their courses. One underutilized path for BSME students to strengthen those skills is the required sequence of laboratory courses, where students write several lab reports, evaluated by graduate teaching assistants (GTAs), many of whom speak English as a second language. Historically, engineering GTAs have not been trained in evaluating student writing in a way that helps students improve their technical communication skills, a method known as formative assessment. Formative assessment can be a key part of the learning process in that a student produces a product on which an evaluator provides feedback and the student learns from the feedback, “forming” new knowledge (Yorke, 2003, pp. 478-479). Such assessment can be informal (feedback on drafts, immediate responses to student questions or presentations in class) or formal (graded work such as lab reports that GTAs evaluate and return to the students with feedback the students are expected to incorporate into future assignments).

This paper details a comprehensive research study of a GTA training program implemented in a large mechanical engineering department at a small Midwestern public “high research activity” university. Situated within the field of Writing Across the Curriculum/Writing in the Disciplines, the training program was developed to meet the unique needs of the department’s GTAs and address perceived deficiencies in undergraduate student technical writing by teaching best practices in writing evaluation. In follow-up interviews after completing the program, the majority of GTAs said the training helped them provide higher quality feedback and improve their own writing because they were more aware of issues such as audience and logical flow. The survey showed the undergraduate students found the set of lab report guidelines, developed as part of the program and applying to all three courses, and the corresponding detailed rubric helped them better understand report requirements and expectations. The survey also showed that there was still some inconsistency in grading from GTA to GTA in one course in particular, but that many GTAs were providing detailed feedback that helped students learn. The summative assessment showed improvement in four of five categories measured in the university’s written communication learning goal rubric: Organization and Conventions, Content Development, Sources and Evidence, and Control Syntax and Mechanics. No improvement was shown in Context and Purpose for Writing. Feedback from GTAs and students played an important role in a curriculum redesign that occurred in parallel with the implementation of this training program. This research is relevant to undergraduate engineering programs seeking to improve the communication skills of their undergraduate students. The training program used limited staff/faculty resources to extend the knowledge and skills of its GTAs and reach all its undergraduate students through existing required courses.

The workers in United Airlines have related in the survey results that there is not ample encouragement and support from the airline management, contributing to the worker’s low level of productivity. The need for people to feel positive about themselves is fundamental, as shown clearly from ordinary experience, as well as from applied research (1984). Recognition makes employees feel valued and appreciated, it contributes to higher employee morale, increases organizational productivity, and can aid in recruitment and retention (‘). The Baudville site gave five pointers to inspire management buy-in: (1) Tell them why it is important; (2) Have a recognition plan to present; (3) Ask for commitment; (4) Give them specific action steps; and (5) Provide recognition materials and tools to get started (2001). These suggestions may help in convincing the management that there is a need for employee recognition, especially in the case of United Airlines, where employee morale is low that measures for a better recognition system is imperative if the management wants to increase the level of employee productivity which would ultimately aid in getting out of the United financial crisis. https://essayfreelancewriters.com/blog/how-to-write-a-lab-report/ has been shown to have an effect on performance and stress. This post was generated by https://essayfreelancewriters.com.

‘It is a common belief that heavy workloads lead to elevated stress and reduced efficiency. Unfortunately, the relation between workload and stress (as well as workload and performance) has received scant attention in the literature. What few studies do exist tends to use non-experimental, cross-sectional, and correlational methods. One influential model is Karasek job strain model. Tests of this model using correlational methodology have shown that the combination of low decision latitude and high job demands were associated with mental strain and job dissatisfaction and cardiovascular disease’ (1999). Downsizing was one of the strategies adopted by United to cut costs in the face of the financial crises. As there have been massive lay-offs in the recent history of United, the survivors of this downsizing have shouldered the responsibility of those who were unfortunate enough to be laid-off. The distribution of workload is therefore not as balanced as before. Fewer people with the same amount of work to do have further affected the morale of United workers. A serious look at devising approaches in order to justly allocate work among the remaining United employees is deemed important by respondents to the survey.

The contingency theory developed by Fred Fiedler is based on efforts to match leadership styles to the task situation. This theory may be adopted by the United management in distributing workload to the present employees of the carrier. As cited in described leader situations according to three task elements: leader-member relations, task structure, and position power. Leader-member relations may be good or bad. Tasks may be structured or unstructured. Leaders may have high or low position power. He suggested that these factors created a continuum of situations ranging from highly favorable to leadership, to highly unfavorable to leadership. Leaders with high task orientations, such as authoritarian or directive styles of leadership, are more successful when the situations are either very favorable or very unfavorable to the leader. The middle ranges of somewhat favorable, according to Fiedler, are best matched to a leader with a more relationally orientated style, such as is often found in democratic leadership styles’ (2003). During times of crisis, this contingency theory proves useful in that a shift in the leadership style may be called for under circumstances that are not normally encountered by the company.