Document Type
Poster
Faculty Advisor
Dr. Ashley Lear
Publication/Presentation Date
2025
Abstract/Description
Understanding how genre conventions shape written communication within collegiate flight programs is an emerging area of WAC research. Collegiate flight students, who will enter the aviation industry in a variety of roles, must be able to write in various genres, including incident and accident reports, in ways that allow a range of readers to partake in a proactive safety culture. This study explored how supplemental discipline-specific guidance affected the writing quality of incident report narratives composed by students at a flight school within an accredited university in the United States. Participants were either given no guidance, bullet-point guidelines, or examples of incident reports at the time of writing and asked to compose an incident report narrative after viewing a video of a mid-flight incident. Three aviation subject matter experts assessed the quality of the narratives according to the AAC&U VALUE written communication rubric after a calibration session with a WAC scholar. No statistically significant differences were found between the three groups, suggesting that collegiate student pilots may need more faculty or expert instruction to make effective use of genre models. Further research is necessary to provide additional insight into how WAC practices can support emerging aviation professionals.
Sponsorship/Conference/Institution
2025 International Writing Across the Curriculum (IWAC) Conference
Location
Ft. Collins, CO, USA
Scholarly Commons Citation
Taylor, K. D. (2025, July 17). Charting a path for writing in aviation: The intersection of WAC and collegiate flight training [Poster presentation]. 2025 International Writing Across the Curriculum Conference, Ft. Collins, CO, USA.
