scholarly journals Developing Technical Writing Skills to Engineering Students

2015 ◽  
Vol 19 ◽  
pp. 1109-1114 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dana Rus
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Students ◽  
Technical Writing ◽  
Writing Skills

Technical writing improvements through engineering lab courses

2020 ◽  
pp. 030641902093962
Author(s):  
Kamau Wright ◽  
Paul E Slaboch ◽  
Reihaneh Jamshidi
Keyword(s):  
Teaching Methods ◽  
Technical Communication ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Solid Mechanics ◽  
Technical Writing ◽  
Writing Skills ◽  
Assessment Method ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Different Levels ◽  
Generation Procedure

Improving assessment of engineering students’ technical communication skills is a good way to monitor and improve teaching of these skills, and positively impact associated learning. The present study reports on a method used to assess students’ technical writing abilities, while also evaluating the impact of technical writing-related instruction and associated curricular and pedagogical approaches. In this way, students’ improvements can be mapped to instruction methods. The strategies for enhancing the delivery of technical writing-related instruction are discussed in terms of the proposed assessment method. This method has three main parts: 1) Sample Generation Procedure – the strategic establishment of a pair of written reports, serving as BEFORE-Labs and AFTER-Labs, and similar enough in topic to justify comparison after assessment, but unexpected to students so that reports are not simply replicated; 2) A Rubric for Technical Writing – encompassing major features of technical writing requirements of engineering lab courses and developed to be both descriptive (having descriptions in each category, to make expectations explicit for evaluators and students) and holistic (having short summarizing narratives for different levels of work, to capture overall quality quickly); and 3) an Evaluation Demonstration – in which a matrix of faculty instructors from sections of different engineering lab courses used the rubric to retroactively assess the samples. Together, these efforts are used not only to assess improvements in students’ technical writing, but by effect also gauge teaching and effectiveness of curricular and pedagogical interventions. In two engineering lab courses, a thermo-fluid lab course and a solid mechanics lab course, BEFORE-Labs and AFTER-Labs were generated using either a method of impromptu “one-hour labs”, with experiments conducted and reports submitted all within an hour at the beginning and end of one semester, or comparison of full lab reports from consecutive semesters of students. Evaluation results clearly show that there were aggregate improvements in students’ technical writing skills, and as such it is concluded that the teaching methods were effective.

scholarly journals Effective Writing Techniques for Engineering Students

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (9) ◽  
pp. 1139-1140
Keyword(s):  
Significant Role ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Technical Writing ◽  
Writing Skills ◽  
Corporate World ◽  
Engineering Writing

Engineering Writing should be comprehensible, explicit, absolute and relevant. In the Corporate World Technical Writing Skills plays a significant role in the career lives of engineers. They are expected to write memos, brochures, proposals, technical manuscripts, contracts and newsletters. The paper is an attempt to explore various horizons in writing and to remediate writing deficiencies of the engineering students.

Techniques for Teaching Communication Skills to the Millennial Generation

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Candice Bauer
Keyword(s):  
Communication Skills ◽  
Generation X ◽  
Millennial Generation ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Technical Writing ◽  
Lesson Plan ◽  
Team Building ◽  
Writing Skills ◽  
Lesson Plans ◽  
K 12

Techniques for teaching communication skills to engineering students of the Millennial Generation are reviewed. A detailed outline of the characteristics of the Millennial Generation are described and compared to the traits of other generations. The Millennial Generation has several distinct characteristics such as developing inclusive relationships, tolerating authority, and leading by collaboration. This contrasts with the characteristics of the Baby Boomers and Generation X (the majority of professors and the students’ parents); however, the characteristics align closely with the Traditionalist Generation (higher administration and the students’ grandparents). Strategies for working among the generations are detailed resulting in the creation of an understanding of how to teach to the Millennial Generation. In order to aid the understanding, lesson plans which focus on creating a learner-centered environment are detailed. The lesson plans include objectives, strategies, content, activities, assessment techniques, and ABET alignment. The topics include team building, effective meetings, a term project, writing skills, and speaking skills. Team building illustrates why and how a team achieves its objectives. Example activities include the development of a team charter. The effective meetings lesson plan details techniques on how to teach students project management skills. Criteria for developing term projects to match the Millennial Generation characteristics are detailed, and an example which also includes K-12 outreach activities is presented. The lesson plan for speaking and writing skills defines grading rubrics for the evaluation and assessment of technical writing and presentations. This work has been in development and implemented for nearly five years in a junior level, multidisciplinary course entitled, Engineering Communications, at the University of Nevada, Reno. The lesson plans are evaluated based on course evaluations, industry interviews, case studies, and an alumni survey.

scholarly journals A Rubric to Assess and Improve Technical Writing in Undergraduate Engineering Courses

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 146
Author(s):  
Maria Asun Cantera ◽  
María-José Arevalo ◽  
Vanessa García-Marina ◽  
Marian Alves-Castro
Keyword(s):  
Diagnostic Tool ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Technical Writing ◽  
Writing Skills ◽  
Future Application ◽  
Main Interest ◽  
Technical Aspects ◽  
Undergraduate Engineering ◽  
Science Technology ◽  
And Mathematics

Although there is consensus in the literature that writing skills are important in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) studies, they are often neglected. However, some efforts have been made to correct this deficiency, one of them being the development of assessment rubrics. This study seeks to contribute to the discussion by presenting the results of the application of a rubric designed to assess the writing skills of a group of 3rd year engineering students. This rubric, which includes linguistic and rhetorical-organizational criteria alongside the mathematical and technical, was used to assess a number of written exercises and essays submitted by students in a 15-week course. The main interest of this study was to test the efficacy of the rubric as a diagnostic tool, conceived to detect the areas of improvement in the students’ written performance and, ultimately, to also help them to achieve higher levels of competence. This goal was achieved, as one of the main conclusions of the study is that, although students usually master the technical aspects of the course, they must improve the linguistic and rhetorical aspects of their written communication. It can likewise be said that all the participants involved in the study profited in one way or another from the application of the rubric and contributed to identifying the ways in which the rubric itself can be improved for future application.

On the Improvement of the Style of Technical Writing

1972 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 147-153
Author(s):  
Michael Millard
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Students ◽  
Technical Writing

In his paper, “Motivating Engineering Students to Publish,” Dr. Herman A. Estrin describes the experiences that he has had in teaching engineering students to write, and particularly to write publishable material. This professional approach to writing has paid off, as Mr. Millard's article demonstrates.

scholarly journals Technical writing as part of project management for engineers: using a writing-process approach to teach disciplinary writing requirements

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 136-145
Author(s):  
Ruth Wiederkehr ◽  
Marie-Thérèse Rudolf von Rohr
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Students ◽  
Technical Writing ◽  
Discourse Markers ◽  
Process Approach ◽  
Formative Feedback ◽  
Project Work ◽  
Disciplinary Writing ◽  
Environmental Technology ◽  
Hands On ◽  
Scientific Standards

This article focuses on how formative feedback can be used to help engineering students write precise and coherent management summaries that appeal to a mixed audience. Management summaries are especially challenging to master as students must strive for a balance between adhering to scientific standards and being intelligible for a wider non-expert readership. Students of Energy and Environmental Technology at the school of engineering (FHNW) in Switzerland write a total of six technical reports about their project work (mostly in German). By analysing two management summaries, the focus is laid on the lecturers’ approach of relying on formative feedback which supports and accompanies the students’ iterative writing processes. It is shown how in early semesters lecturers provide hands-on guidance, such as suggesting discourse markers or pinpointing vague references to sharpen students’ awareness of the need to write as concisely as possible for mixed audiences.

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