By Amanda Kelner, WIC Intern

Oregon State is home to an ever expanding computer science program. It is also home to a few computer science organizations that deal with projects beyond the scope of the university. One such organization is the Open Source Lab (OSL), which is grounded in open source technology and projects.  Our WIC intern, Amanda Kelner, is an undergraduate studying music performance and English at OSU and is also the staff writer and media coordinator for the OSL. We wanted to know more about how writing and documentation played out in the open source world. Kelner sat down with Director Lance Albertson to learn more.

In an age of competition and ownership, the OSL and the larger open source community is working to expand a new frontier of accessibility and transparency in technology and information. The OSL is a hosting and development center for open source projects that often come from outside the lab and the university (from companies such as Facebook and IBM), as well as an experiential learning program for students in computer science. Students receive hands-on interaction with the coding and development process of real world projects. The projects the lab and other open source centers work on are exclusively focused on open source technology and software. Open source is the belief and implementation of free access to the internet and its technologies. Everything the OSL does is visible to the public in some way. Thus, user documentation is viewable by the public.

Documentation comes in many forms. While computer science does involve a great deal of code, it is just as important if not more so to document work. Documentation is an important part of the development process, both for interested parties and collaborators. Consider the function of lab reports. Lab reports detail the process with which an experiment is completed, including questions, methods, data, and interpretations. The lab report allows other scientists to review and possibly replicate the experiment. The same general principle applies to documentation in computer science. It describes anything from product function to code development to online information. The structure of this documentation varies depending on the purpose, but the goals are all the same: transparency.

In a recent convention known as PyCon, open source documentation was broken down into four genres: tutorials, how-to guides, discussions, and references. Each serves a different function depending on what the documenter is trying to accomplish. Tutorials are learning-oriented, how-tos are problem-oriented, discussions are understanding-oriented, and references are information-oriented. Albertson states all of these documentation styles are important to circulate information. “You use different types of documentation for different things. If you’re a developer looking up quick information, you would use some sort of reference manual, but if you want to see how a project was developed, you might look to the discussions the developers carried out online to figure out how they came to write a specific line of code.”

Git is one example of a program that not only facilities documentation, but stores this documentation and other data. Git is a decentralized version control system, which means it hosts and stores metadata, or data that informs or describes other data. Many programmers use Git during all phases of their development process and other Git users can view what they do. It is free to the public and a major documentation platform for open source users, which has been in operation for nearly a decade and is still used prevalently, even in a world of fast changing technology.

Programs like Git also keep track of who does what to any given project. Because open source means open access, this also allows for other developers to work on a project licensed by someone else. Every developer has their own account, so when they make changes to the code, Git, and programs like it, keep track of this. “All the history of who owns what is in the sourcecode,” Albertson says.

According to Albertson, this is an ideal situation. Often, documentation lags behind the real work. As projects progress, some developers may not put as much time in documentation as they do in the actual coding. To combat this, Albertson says, “At the lab, we try to have fresh eyes review our documentation. They tell us when something doesn’t make sense, or when it’s not working, and we work together to update and fix it.” This form of peer review is an important part of the development process at the lab. Not only documentation, but code is also reviewed by both students and full-time professionals.

The OSL works hard to continuously encourage and facilitate documentation among its workers. Like students in the capstone for WIC students in computer science, OSL students must relate to basic rhetoric, such as audience, genre, and language. The goals are all the same: transparency. As the open source community urges the next generation towards the next frontier of open access, the information and documentation must reflect the diligence and transparency of the ideology. Only then will the open source initiative and the OSL create a sustainable foundation.

Earlier this year, students in WR420/520 Writing Across the Curriculum were asked to interview a professor in a discipline that interests them, asking how that professor teaches their majors to write. Students were also asked to make connections to course readings as they arose naturally. Aleah Hobbs is a third year undergraduate at Oregon State University. As an English major and a writing minor, she writes quite a bit, but this is her first published work. Aleah’s initial interest upon arriving at OSU was in microbiology and, though she decided on a different degree path, that interest led her to seek out an interview with Dr. Kate Field, Director of the BioResource Research program, Director of OSU’s Bioenergy Project, and professor of writing intensive courses in microbiology.

-Vicki Tolar Burton, WIC Director

Writing in a Microbiology Classroom: An Interview with Dr. Kate Field

By Aleah Hobbs

In high school, many students were taught how to write a standard, five-paragraph, argumentative essay. This opens a few doors for students in college, and gives them a general understanding of how to present their ideas and defend them with outside sources and evidence. They further develop writing skills in Writing I and II courses. However, those majoring in mathematics, sciences, and many other disciplines, must learn additional methods of writing to effectively communicate in their discipline, new methods they may not learn until their upper-division courses. Educators like Dr. Kate Field, Department of Microbiology, have devised engaging assignments to teach students the material of a course, as well as the conventions of writing in their discipline.

For Dr. Field, the types of writing necessary for her own work are primarily published research to communicate findings to the public and grant proposals to receive funding for projects. These genres are generally not covered formally in introductory writing courses, but to ensure majors learn these skills, Dr. Field has woven them into her writing intensive course through various writing assignments. One way writing is used in her course MB 385 Emerging Infectious Diseases is through a scientific press release assignment in which students are asked to read papers from the 1800s, figure out what scientific breakthroughs are discussed in the paper, and then individually write a modern press release as if these breakthroughs had been made recently at OSU. This gives the students practice in communicating scientific discovery with the public, while also teaching them some history of microbiology. From that point, Dr. Field has each student choose an infectious disease that the rest of their assignments will be focused on. With this disease, the students are asked to write a case report like those used by medical professionals. The students get to make up their case with an imaginary patient but are required to use evidence to support the claims made in their report. This forces students to research their disease and gives them the opportunity to “write like doctors, which is fun for them because they all imagine themselves as doctors,” according to Dr. Field.

Another way that Dr. Field offers students practice in writing for their discipline is through a mini grant-proposal assignment based on the infectious disease they chose. They are asked to identify a problem involving their disease, come up with an approach to solve that problem, then write their grant proposal to get funding for the approach they’ve identified. In doing so, students have the chance to propose their own ideas for research and experimentation, which is the kind of creativity they’ll need as scientists, and it gives students real practice using the writing styles that will be applicable to their future careers. This is reminiscent of Michael Carter’s discussion of empirical inquiry in his article “Ways of Knowing, Doing, and Writing in the Disciplines.” Carter describes empirical inquiry as “a way of doing that consists of answering questions by drawing conclusions from systematic investigation based on empirical data;” he references microbiology as a discipline that exemplifies empirical inquiry. While writing to learn is also incorporated in Dr. Field’s class, these specific assignments allow students to learn how they should be writing in the professional world in their discipline.

Similar writing assignments have been incorporated in lower-level courses through the inclusion of lab report writing in the general series of chemistry, biology, and others, but these are often sans critique and guidance. Students may be asked to turn in a lab report, but are only asked to complete a single draft and thus get very little feedback on their work. This is not the case with Dr. Field’s writing assignments. In order to mark up students’ work, ensure they’re on the right track and writing like scientists, Dr. Field requires a first draft for all of her writing assignments. She leaves it ungraded to keep the stakes low and gear it more toward the purpose of learning, but students are required to hand in this draft in order to receive credit. This strategy is in line with the WAC goals involving “writing to learn,” and slowly teaches students how to “write to communicate” in their discipline. These goals, outlined effectively by Susan McLeod in “The Pedagogy of Writing Across the Curriculum,” can aid in students’ understanding of material as they write to work through their thoughts, as well as their understanding of the expectations of writing within their discipline.

As for what she looks for in her students’ writing, Dr. Field asks for the work to be succinct. There shouldn’t be any wordiness, but often students find it hard to cut out the extra things they think they need to say, “‘the data derived from the research shows that A equals B’ when they could just say ‘A equals B,’” she added. Since some articles in the scientific community have word limits, shorter is better. She states that some writers from other fields may think it sounds rude to “just put it out there,” but to scientists, the quick relay of information “starts to look correct.” In addition to succinctness of writing, Dr. Field actually doesn’t like reports to be written entirely in passive voice. “Something didn’t happen all by itself. You have to have a subject in there,” she stated. She does admit that it takes some balancing, but entirely passive papers tend to sound “very awkward.”

Of course, like most educators, Dr. Field looks for proper grammar in her students’ writing. While she knows it isn’t her job — and realistically, it shouldn’t be her job — she explained “I kind of think of it as being my job,” and marks up papers for their grammatical errors as well as content and form. This is a difficult choice on her part because she is aware that students aren’t required to take grammar courses, and grammar may not be covered in public primary or secondary schools, so many students simply haven’t received an education on proper grammar. This grammar issue puts educators in a position where they must decide whether or not they’ll mark students down for grammatical errors. For Dr. Field, grammar is important enough to affect students’ grades, but she gives them the opportunity to revise and resubmit in order to raise that grade.

Incorporating lessons on writing into an existing course in the major can be a difficult task, but Dr. Field manages to provide her students with information on both emerging infectious diseases and writing like a medical professional. Educators like Dr. Field are giving students the opportunity to practice these skills prior to entering the professional world, preparing these scientists for their future careers in research and medicine.

Works Cited

“Dr. Kate Field.” Personal interview. 21 Oct. 2016

Carter, Michael. “Ways of Knowing, Doing, and Writing in the Disciplines.” Writing Across the Curriculum: A Critical Sourcebook. Terry Myers Zawacki and Paul M. Rogers. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2012. Print. Bedford/St. Martin’s Ser. in Rhetoric and Composition.

McLeod, Susan, “The Pedagogy of Writing Across the Curriculum.” Writing Across the Curriculum: A Critical Sourcebook. Terry Myers Zawacki and Paul M. Rogers. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2012. Print. Bedford/St. Martin’s Ser. in Rhetoric and Composition.