Professional writing skills are essential for crafting job application materials where applicants showcase their qualifications to recruiters and employers. Lettersmith is a digital tool that supports writing through scaffolded annotation, an instructional approach combining an expert-informed checklist, annotated examples, and self-tagging. We evaluated the efficacy of the instructional mechanisms that make up scaffolded annotation, as well as the use of ChatGPT, in facilitating writing cognitive processes and writing quality. Through a lab experiment with 146 first-year college students writing and revising a cover letter, we found that the combined mechanisms of scaffolded annotation within Lettersmith promoted a stronger understanding of the writing genre. Specifically, the use of a checklist combined with another writing support, like an example or self-tagging, was particularly effective for improving writing quality. Unstructured use of ChatGPT did not improve writing cognitive processes or writing quality more than Lettersmith.

Contribution: This research-to-practice full paper uses a quantitative intersectional approach to examine how social identities (e.g., gender, race, and nationality) impact the ratings of contributions of engineering students in their course teams. Patterns in ratings of contribution across various demographic groups provide valuable insights for designing effective and inclusive teaching practices for diverse student populations, thereby enhancing equity in engineering education. Background: Team-based learning offers students great opportunities to learn. Existing research has underscored that student social identities play a critical role in determining student learning processes and fostering academic achievement. Research questions: 1) How do social identities, such as gender, race, and nationality, influence ratings of engineering college students' contributions to team? and 2) How can we characterize the intersectional effects of social identities on ratings of engineering college students' contributions to team? Methods: We collected data from over 1,700 college engineering students at a research-oriented university located in the Midwest region of the United States. Employing multilevel modeling, we investigated the relationship between engineering students' social identities and their ratings of contributions to course teams. Findings: Our investigation revealed that students' contributions to teams are statistically significantly associated with their intertwined social identities. White, male, and domestic students tended to be rated as contributing most to group conversations during the process of constructing ideas. However, these identities had a lesser influence on the execution of tasks in terms of idea enactments and their contributions to the overall team project. While White students were more likely to offer ideas, they were less inclined to encourage their peers' contributions compared to peers from other racial groups. International students, especially those from Asian backgrounds, were rated as contributing fewer ideas, which might reflect challenges in actively participating due to potential language barriers. Regardless of their race and nationality, female students were perceived as making more effort than their male counterparts.

In 2016, a curricular information service was launched on the main campus of the University of Michigan. Through course guide entry links, students could view five-year historical summaries of various course properties. In subsequent years, the service expanded to share more elements of the academic landscape, including recent information on instructors and degrees. Rebranded as Atlas and positioned as an aid to improving academic decisions, this local campus innovation has scaled to be used by 99% of undergraduate students, with more than 54,000 unique users in calendar year 2022. A schedule builder feature and the ability to create and share collections have driven user growth and offer unique research windows into student academic preferences and decisions. As Atlas pivots from sharing passive historical views to more actively guiding students' academic pathways, the faculty and staff team behind the service continue to experiment with community building, translational research, and maintaining innovation at scale. Here, we review the growth and evolution of the service and share the experience of innovating at scale at a major American research university.