published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

Despite calls for better training of college composition teachers utilizing computer-assisted writing instruction (CAWI), English departments have only recently begun to systematically address the faculty development needs of these teachers. Other fields such as adult education and staff development have begun applying theory and research to faculty development efforts, but CAWI proponents have yet to attain that depth of study and commitment.By investigating methods and characteristics of CAWI faculty development programs, this study found that academic-year workshops were the most common development activity, although teachers preferred personal, collaborative approaches like mentors, consultants, and discussion groups. These patterns were consistent across types of colleges and universities, indicating general context descriptors like institutional size and mission did not significantly influence or limit faculty development practices. This discrepancy between preferred and offered programs indicates faculty needs are not being met, and offers potential reasons for a lack of satisfaction with CAWI faculty development and administration.Faculty respondents identified adequate time and funding as the most important contributors to the success of CAWI faculty development, noting that faculty support-particularly the personalized attention teachers prefer-is time-intensive and requires extensive commitment from those providing the services. These time concerns reflect staffing patterns: CAWI administrative duties were added to the workload of current departmental administrators just over half of the time, and CAWI support duties were assigned to current administrators over onethird of the time. These support duties were assigned to non-tenure-line personnel over one-quarter of the time, a practice that raises questions about authority and credibility needed to administer faculty development programs.Despite a relative lack of concern among faculty, evaluation and reward systems play an important long-term role in CAWI support. Current structures do not adequately recognize and reward CAWI-related scholarship and service, including faculty development work. Applying Boyer and Glassick's expanded concepts of scholarship might prove useful in improving and professionalizing CAWI faculty development efforts, thereby helping secure scholarly identity for CAWI and its support activities. / Department of English

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Illinois State University, 2003. / Title from title page screen, viewed Jan. 6, 2005. Dissertation Committee: Janice W. Neuleib (chair), Kenneth J. Lindblom, Julie M. Jung. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 278-289) and abstract. Also available in print.

Magister Educationis - MEd / This aim of this study was to investigate the extent to which writing skills offered in the one-year intensive English course and in the 75 hour course of Speaking and Writing Skills, prepare students for academic writing in the subjects which are offered through the medium of English. The study focused on first year Economics and Management. / South Africa

This information studies dissertation deals with the problem that results from research outside academia risk to receive little or no attention if communicated through reports, instead of in mainstream academic genres like research journal articles. The case in focus is Swedish development-led (DL) archaeology, i.e. state regulated archaeology preceding land development. Swedish DL archaeology is organized as a semi-regulated market. The organizations competing on the market are professional service organizations selling research services to land developers. Regional government departments, county administrative boards, function as intermediaries setting up procurement-like processes. In previous research on archaeological documentation, the problem with non-use of reports has been described as depending on cultural issues of access, possible to solve if individuals make efforts to communicate and use extra-academic results. This dissertation offers an alternative definition of the problem, highlighting a different set of solutions. The aim is to further the understanding of how the distribution of research duties to professional service organizations affects the scholarly documentation in Swedish archaeology. The aim is met through identification, operationalization and analysis of resources available to report writing DL archaeology practitioners, and an analysis of how practitioners draw on these resources. The results further the understanding of how reports are shaped within the DL archaeology institution. In view of these results, efforts to solve issues of access should target the organization of research in the archaeology discipline, and specifically how scholarly documentation is governed on the archaeology market. The dissertation draws on science and technology studies, practice theory, and document theory for the design of the study of documentation resources and contexts in extra-academic research. A mixed methods approach is applied to capture regulative, institutional, and infrastructural resources, and practitioners’ use thereof. Dissertation papers I-III contain analyses of concrete instantiations of the resources: information policy, documentation ideals, and information source use. The fourth paper presents an analysis of how practitioners draw on these resources in their everyday report writing. The dissertation concerns archaeology specifically, but serves as grounds to inquire into the premises for scholarly documentation in other areas of extra-academic research and knowledge-making as well. / Archaeological Information in the Digital Society (ARKDIS)

University teaching staff are employed because of their knowledge in their particular disciplines. Many do not have a qualification to teach at a higher education institution upon commencement of their academic career. In that group there are few who have the research experience required to assist at postgraduate level. This should be developed as one of the three core activities of higher education, in which they have to be involved. This study is the result of a problem that I encountered as a higher education practitioner. In keeping with my being a practitioner researcher within an action research paradigm, this report is written mainly in the first person. The study reports on how my personal theories grew over a period resulting in the need to constantly improve my own practice. These personal theories culminated in the development of an instrument (ADaM), to assess writing. ADaM was used primarily to facilitate reflection in post-graduate writing practice. In this study, there were three sets of workshops comprising 13 practical sessions each, where lecturers engaged with the process of reading, writing, computer-mediation and, to a limited extent, with the concept of mentorship. The purpose was to answer the research question: Can a writing assessment instrument be used to sensitise staff teaching post-graduates to reflect on the complex nature of producing and assessing academic writing? At two points during the 13 practical sessions, data was gathered through semistructured interviews. The data has been analysed using a form of grounded theory referred to as remodeled grounded theory. Since the analysis traversed both the quantitative and qualitative paradigms of research, it was necessary also to place the study within the third paradigm, referred to as mixed methods research. The analysis has been presented via a series of relationships generated first by open coding, then axial coding and concludes with selective coding. In addition, the comments of an independent coder were used to validate the analysis. In accordance with classic grounded theory, it was only after the analysis of the data and the emergence of a substantive theory that I referred to existing theory in the penultimate chapter as validation of my findings. The findings from the study, together with existing literature, allowed me to conclude that “Creating an awareness of writing assessment sensitises academics to their roles as HE practitioners particularly in the areas of writing and mentorship in post-graduate supervision”.

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published_or_final_version / abstract / Education / Master / Master of Education

This aim of this study was to investigate the extent to which writing skills offered in the one-year intensive English course and in the 75 hour course of Speaking and Writing Skills, prepare students for academic writing in the subjects which are offered through the medium of English. The study focused on first year Economics and Management.

Using first-year, Psychology I examination essays, the role of underpreparedness in the difficulties experienced by English second-language students in academic essay writing was investigated. Essays were selected from each of four performance categories; over 70%, between 650/0 and 50%. between 45% and 35%, and below 30%. A representative sample of English first-language essays were also selected to provide important comparative analyses, in order to clearly delineate the nature of linguistic and cognitive contributions to the phenomenon of underpreparedness. The essays were subjected to three kinds of linguistic analysis. The micro-level analysis consisted of a basic error analysis, which combined a surface strategy taxonomy with a linguistic classification of errors. Second, the essays were analysed using a five-way classification model for difficulties with cohesion. The results for these micro-level analyses indicated that surface-level errors made little difference to the substance of the text (essay) and that markers were tolerant of such errors in their assessment of the essays. Consequently, these taxonomies only pointed to more fundamental linguistic or cognitive problems to explain the mark discrepancies between the different performance groups. A macro-level analysis was conducted to examine the global inter-relationships within the essays. Using a modified form of discourse analysis and a coherence scale analysis, the degree to which students initiated, developed and resolved the central themes/topics of the essay was assessed. The results of the present study suggest that second-language students present with four key features of difficulty in academic essay writing. In particular, the fonn and structure of essay writing, the development of conceptual principles, metacognitive control, and the norms of distanced writing. This study further points to three main areas where mediation and assistance could take place to facilitate underprepared, second-language students, namely developing linguistic competence, explicating the implicit set of conventions particular to academic writing, as well as developing the appropriate epistemic assumptions for university-level textual engagement. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Natal, Durban, 2000.