AN INTERDISCIPLINARY APPROACH TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF WRITING SKILLS IN COMPUTER SCIENCE STUDENTS

This paper describes an inter-departmental solution to the traditionally poorly-written computer science term paper. A student questionnaire identified common anxieties of topic selection, library research, format, and organization, which were addressed in a three-part project that cuhrtinated in a final paper, Unique in this solution was the English and computer science collaboration that resulted in non-traditional solutions to traditional problems, Background Need for conlmuntiatwns skilk The literature is tilled with concerns over the communications skills of computer science majors. Past studies have shown these skills to rate near the top of skills needed by both professional computer scientists and engineers [17,25]. Few undergraduate programs require formal studies in technical writing, which involves objective writing skills quite different from the subjective literary writing skills taught in standard English composition courses. Moreover, the value of writing as a form of learning and vehicle for synthesis of the field and development of higherIevel thinkhtg skills [21,19] cannot be overlooked. Often instructors address these issues by requiring writing of students in computer science classes. Rarely is this combined with instruction about the writing process or its relation to the field of computer science. Most undergraduate learning is restricted to learning from pre-organized textbooks and manuals; few students are exposed to journals or research about the field. Therefore, researchers undertook an easily-replicated project to increase student writing skills. This model and its development are described in this paper.

Survey of literature The literature suggests an increasing need for communications skills by computing professionals and offers solutions to the problem. Approaches involving requiring separate writing courses are presented by Jackowitz [14], Rice [20], Sellars [22], and Cassel [4]. The more common option entailed enhancing existing courses to include communications and writing components. One approach was that of assigning writing on microthemes [11,21]. Others involved summarizing, analyzing, andlor critiquing research articles [2,8,24] or reports [13]. A third consisted of requiring a full research paper [10,19] counting for a significant portion of the course grade. Permission to copy without fee all or part of this material is granted provided that the copies are not made or distributed for direct commercial advantage, the ACM copyright notice and the title of the publication and its date appear, and notice is given that copying is by permission of the Association for Computing Machinery.

To copy otherwise, or to republish, and/or specific permission. ACM-24thCSE-2/93 -lN,USA 01993 ACM 0-89791 -566 -61931000210274 . ..S’ equires a fee .50 Problem solving approach Researchers in the English and computer science department teamed to provide a support system for the students including formal instruction in technical writing and written materials documenting the project specifications. A term paper was developed in a top-down fashion similar to a programming project, with distinct phases: a proposal, an outline and abstract, and a full paper. Evaluation was quantified and included written feedback on progress.

The students developed writing skills as a problem solving activity that would enhance both their academic and professional careers. The Student Population Studied The project involved approximately 80 students enrolled in CSC 4101, Programming Languages, at Louisiana State University (LSU), in the fall 1991 and spring 1992 semesters. CSC 4101 is a senior-level course required of all computer science majors. Two-thirds of the students were computer science majors while one-thwd were majors in other areas and graduate students. Writfng anxk@ and bck of writing experience A survey instrument was developed to assist the researchers in evaluating the students. Students were asked about their writing backgrounds and their feelings about items related to writing. The attitudinal items dealt with the students’ perceptions of linkages between writing and computer science and possible apprehension about writing. Items associated with writing anxiety[3 ,71 in Burgeon’s work were included to provide an index of writing anxiety for each student. The group had neither writing experience nor experience using the library. Over a quarter of the students had never written a term paper! The instructors were familiar with the problems of computer anxiety [15, 16,26] otlen encountered with non-technical majors. The survey showed an extreme amount of an opposite but parallel type of problem, namely, writing anxiety. Over half of the class exhibited tendencies associated with writing anxiety, including all but two of the undergraduates. Term paper requirement Historically, CSC 4101 has included a required term paper. With the advent of CSAB accreditation [5], the Department formally adopted the term paper requirement as a way of ensuring that all majors had participated in such study. Typically, students were informed that they would write a term paper on some aspect of programming languages. At the last minute, students furiously wrote poor papers, received no feedback, and left the program with little benefit from the process. The resulting papers had little organization or content. Many papers, despite formal reference requirements, contained no citations.