Discourse-Based Communities of Practice: Developing Graduate Students' Abilities to Communicate their Research Across Disparate Disciplines and Experience Levels

摘要

We present the design, development, and on-going assessment of a novel forum to foster research communication skills among doctoral graduate students who are engaged in thematically intertwined research projects but who belong to diverse engineering programs and related programs in life sciences and physical sciences. All doctoral students must learn how to disseminate their research and learn from the research of others. However these challenges are amplified by the major differences in knowledge base, terminology, and culture that exist in the increasingly multi-disciplinary and cross-functional contexts of engineering in the 21st century. We are exploring how our forum for research interchange, developed as a core activity for research fellowship recipients of an Integrative Graduate Education Research and Training (IGERT) grant from National Science Foundation, can contribute towards the development of the requisite communication skills to help equip students for success in their graduate education as well as future professional employment in both academic and industrial settings.