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This manual discusses the role of student writing mentors and the processes of consulting on student papers, giving feedback, and grading. The manual provides specific examples of working with students who are assigned to write critical summaries of research articles.

Introduction

The Cain Project in Engineering and Professional Communication designed this manual for undergraduate students who plan to become communication mentors. The manual prepares mentors for the experience of consulting with student writers—reading, evaluating, and offering helpful feedback in conference with individual students. In some courses and/or assignments, writing mentors also grade papers, so the manual also includes tips and guidelines for assigning grades to student work.

The goal of the mentoring process, both for mentors and their student clients, is to develop a voice in the field. Because science and engineering fields are highly collaborative, fast-changing, and competitive, individual members of these disciplines must be able to communicate effectively with one another in teams; give feedback; and analyze, summarize, and respond to published studies. As new members of a community, student writers need to feel that they are involved in a conversation with engaged members of their field. Even a summary can manifest a dialog between the student writer and authors or presenters whose work is summarized. By relaying the ideas and findings of others, student writers construct a position for themselves alongside these others in the field. As readers, mentors relate to the published authors through the voice of the writer who summarizes. Mentors judge the value of a summary in terms of accuracy and a well-constructed explanation of the source, as expressed in the summarizer's own words.

Writing mentors are typically advanced students who are actively involved in analyzing published work and working on their own research or design projects. Through the mentoring process, they develop an ability to respond to student writing, hone their own writing skills, and act as guides and examples for younger students. In a large course whose rigorous content can sometimes intimidate, these younger students may end up feeling like faceless wheel-cogs in the information-churning academic machine. Mentoring brings human interaction back to the forefront of intellectual activity in science and engineering.

What is a mentor?

A mentor cares about the person who learns, and that means the mentor commends before criticizing, tries to understand the student's purposes, and directs comments toward helping the student succeed. Realizing that praise changes habits much more than nagging or condemning, a mentor may point out a place where a student made a decision correctly and then suggest that the student look for a couple of places where the decision went wrong and try to figure out why.

A mentor models the attitudes he or she wants others to imitate. It's all right to tell a student that you were disappointed in the work and that you hope he or she will do a better job next time. It's not all right to demean the student. However, you don't want to give a student the idea that a weak draft will earn a high grade; you can't take responsibility for the student's work, which must remain his or her own. So you want to be honest. Furthermore, when you grade the student's work, you must be free to award points without favoritism. Students should expect warm human beings with high standards in the scientific and engineering communities.

Questions & Answers

A golfer on a fairway is 70 m away from the green, which sits below the level of the fairway by 20 m. If the golfer hits the ball at an angle of 40° with an initial speed of 20 m/s, how close to the green does she come?
Aislinn Reply
cm
tijani
what is titration
John Reply
what is physics
Siyaka Reply
A mouse of mass 200 g falls 100 m down a vertical mine shaft and lands at the bottom with a speed of 8.0 m/s. During its fall, how much work is done on the mouse by air resistance
Jude Reply
Can you compute that for me. Ty
Jude
what is the dimension formula of energy?
David Reply
what is viscosity?
David
what is inorganic
emma Reply
what is chemistry
Youesf Reply
what is inorganic
emma
Chemistry is a branch of science that deals with the study of matter,it composition,it structure and the changes it undergoes
Adjei
please, I'm a physics student and I need help in physics
Adjanou
chemistry could also be understood like the sexual attraction/repulsion of the male and female elements. the reaction varies depending on the energy differences of each given gender. + masculine -female.
Pedro
A ball is thrown straight up.it passes a 2.0m high window 7.50 m off the ground on it path up and takes 1.30 s to go past the window.what was the ball initial velocity
Krampah Reply
2. A sled plus passenger with total mass 50 kg is pulled 20 m across the snow (0.20) at constant velocity by a force directed 25° above the horizontal. Calculate (a) the work of the applied force, (b) the work of friction, and (c) the total work.
Sahid Reply
you have been hired as an espert witness in a court case involving an automobile accident. the accident involved car A of mass 1500kg which crashed into stationary car B of mass 1100kg. the driver of car A applied his brakes 15 m before he skidded and crashed into car B. after the collision, car A s
Samuel Reply
can someone explain to me, an ignorant high school student, why the trend of the graph doesn't follow the fact that the higher frequency a sound wave is, the more power it is, hence, making me think the phons output would follow this general trend?
Joseph Reply
Nevermind i just realied that the graph is the phons output for a person with normal hearing and not just the phons output of the sound waves power, I should read the entire thing next time
Joseph
Follow up question, does anyone know where I can find a graph that accuretly depicts the actual relative "power" output of sound over its frequency instead of just humans hearing
Joseph
"Generation of electrical energy from sound energy | IEEE Conference Publication | IEEE Xplore" ***ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7150687?reload=true
Ryan
what's motion
Maurice Reply
what are the types of wave
Maurice
answer
Magreth
progressive wave
Magreth
hello friend how are you
Muhammad Reply
fine, how about you?
Mohammed
hi
Mujahid
A string is 3.00 m long with a mass of 5.00 g. The string is held taut with a tension of 500.00 N applied to the string. A pulse is sent down the string. How long does it take the pulse to travel the 3.00 m of the string?
yasuo Reply
Who can show me the full solution in this problem?
Reofrir Reply
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Source:  OpenStax, Becoming a professional scholar. OpenStax CNX. Aug 03, 2009 Download for free at http://cnx.org/content/col10871/1.2
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