Our analyst training program focuses on science, technology, engineering, mathematics (STEM) students. As such, writing tends to not be an integral part of students' formal university education. It's a real shame since so many (if not most) technical jobs have a significant writing component. Analysts in particular tend to spend a lot of time writing briefs and reports.
WLA can be challenging, even for students in liberal arts majors with lots of writing experience, because it is very different style from what students are introduced to in English 101. When teaching WLA, we stress: Concise, Clear, and Professional.
We have spent a considerable amount of time developing an easy way to teach writing. We have been unsuccessful. It simply takes lots and lots of practice with productive feedback. As such, student analysts are required to write reports and briefs regularly. We find that most students initially hate the writing component of the program. However, while I have yet to find a STEM student that LOVES writing, most grow to appreciate the satisfaction of producing a well-reasoned product. We consider that a success.
The most common issues are bad grammar, poor sourcing, and awkward sentence structure. Poor sourcing is easily fixed, whereas grammar and sentence structure are a life long struggle for every analyst. Personally, I'm particularly bad with grammar and writing concise (as you may have noticed).
An important WLA problem that can be fixed via training is the tendency to spend way too much time writing about the "What," and not nearly enough time writing about the "Why." It's an understandable mistake - describing something is much easier than explaining its importance. We have found that developing standardized briefing templates can help alleviate this issue. The downside is that this standardization can also hinder creative thinking.
The trick is finding a good balance.
Another common WLA issue that can be fixed via training is helping students understand the differences between opinion, fact, and analysis. This lesson inevitably ends with discussing the pros and cons of using weasel words (suggest, likely, perhaps, etc.) in analysis.
I have a good long rant saved up about weasel words for another posting =].
Example Lesson
Practice may be the most important component for improving WLA. However, extensive feedback on said practice can dramatically improve (and speed up) the learning process. The following is an early (2011) brief we received from a junior engineering student on the Israeli Iron Dome Missile Defense System. The System is designed to shoot down short range rockets, and has been used very effectively against Hamas in Gaza.
Please keep in mind that these are students and as such, should not expect the same quality as would be expected of an experienced analyst. We also do not particularly care about formal formats since every agency/organization seems to teach their own individual style.
I apologize for the terrible image quality. However, even if you can't read it, the most important point I want to get across is how intense editing can get - look at all that red ink!
I met with the student author and explained each edit in detail. The process is very time consuming and downright exhausting. However, if an analyst training program really wants to improve a student's WLA fast, we found combining lots of practice with a strong feedback loop most effective.
There are ways to try and make writing a little more fun for the students. Our analyst students work full time in the summer, and we like to play the board game "Risk" with them occasionally on a late Friday afternoon. We had a new student who was particularly passionate about the game write a brief about his experiences. For those familiar with Risk, he wrote about why he failed to take over Asia despite a strong starting position in Australia. While the quality of the brief wasn't great, he had fun writing it, and it was quite amusing.
It also made a great propaganda piece for renewing our Program's contract =D.
In addition to briefs, our students also jointly produce longer open source technical reports for various sponsors on a wide range of topics ranging from nano-wire batteries to vulnerabilities in the Android Operating System.
As a warning to instructors: We have found that new students expect us to know all about the topic they are researching/writing and come to us for validation. We have to explain how we don't know anything on the topic and that's why they were given the assignment. However, I do recommend instructors guide new classes of students on how to organize their papers as well as editing and suggesting improvements.
No comments:
Post a Comment