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This study aims to identify the linguistic feature characteristics of multiple writing assignments completed by engineering undergraduates, including entry-level engineering laboratory reports and writing produced in non-engineering courses. We used Biber’s multidimensional analysis (MDA) method as the analysis tool for the student writing artifacts. MDA is a corpus-analysis methodology that utilizes language processing software to analyze text by parts of speech (e.g. nouns, verbs, prepositions, etc.). MDA typically identifies six “dimensions” of linguistic features that a text may perform in, and each dimension is rated along a continuum. The dimensions used in this study include Dimension 1: Informational vs involved, Dimension 3: Context dependence, Dimension 4: Overt persuasion, and Dimension 5: Abstract vs. non-abstract information. In AY 2019-2020, total of 97 student artifacts (N = 97) were collected. For this analysis, we grouped documents into similar assignment genres: research-papers (n = 45), technical reports and analyses (n = 7) and engineering laboratory reports (n = 35), with individual engineering students represented at least once in the laboratory report and once in another category. Findings showed that engineering lab reports are highly informational, minimally-persuasive, and used deferred elaboration. Students’ research papers in academic writing courses, conversely, were highly involved, highly persuasive, and featured more immediate elaboration on claims and data. The analyses above indicate that students are generally performing as expected in lab report writing in entry-level engineering lab classes, and that this performance is markedly different from their earlier academic writing courses, such as first-year-composition (FYC) and technical communication/writing, indicating that students are not merely “writing like engineers” from their first day at college. However, similarities in context dependence suggest that engineering students must still learn to modulate their languages in writing dramatically depending on the writing assignment. While some students show little growth from one context to another, others are able to change their register or other linguistic/structural features to meet the needs of their audience.
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Developing Best Practices for Teaching Scientific Documentation: Toward a Better Understanding of How Lab Notebooks Contribute to Knowledge-building in Engineering Design and Experimentation
Laboratory notebooks perform important roles in the engineering disciplines. They at once record an engineer’s work, serve as an important reference for future reports and/or articles, and perform as a kind of journal that enables questioning presuppositions, considering new approaches, and generating new ideas. Given the importance of notebooks, there is surprisingly little scholarship on how to teach their use. Stanley and Lewandowski (2016) surveyed students in undergraduate laboratory courses and evaluated how their notebooks were being used. They found that “few [students] … thought that their lab classes successfully taught them the benefit of maintaining a lab notebook.” Moreover, the authors’ later survey of the literature and of college faculty led them to conclude that in undergraduate lab courses “little formal attention has been paid to addressing what is considered ‘best practice’ for scientific documentation …[or] how researchers come to learn these practices” (Stanley and Lewandowski, 2018). At XXX University, two courses, Interfacing the Digital Domain with the Analog World (AEP 2640) and Engineering Communications (ENGRC 2640) are taught in conjunction. In AEP 2640, students use a computer to control equipment and acquire measurements in an engineering design and experimentation laboratory. Laboratory activities such as the development of a computer interface for an oscilloscope, a set of motors, and a photodiode culminate in the realization of an automated laser scanning microscope system. In ENGRC 2640, students receive instruction and feedback on their lab notebook entries and, in turn, use those notebooks as a resource for preparing a Progress Report and an Instrument Design Report. The instructors encourage peer review in order to facilitate improvement of students’ skills in the art of notebook use while allowing them to develop these skills and personal style through trial and error during the research. The primary learning objectives are: 1) to enable students to engage in real laboratory research; and 2) to develop proficiency with select genres associated with that research. The educational research objectives are: 1) to study students’ developing proficiency in order to generate best practices for teaching and learning scientific documentation; and 2) to better understand the contribution of scientific documentation to the teaching and learning of authentic research. This study is a work-in-progress. We will present the study design. That design involves, first, developing a self-efficacy scale for both conducting laboratory research and performing those genres associated with that research. Self-efficacy or a “person’s awareness of their ability to accomplish a goal” (Kolar et. al, 2013) has proven to be a powerful predictor of achievement. Our intent is to track learner agency. Second, the design also involves conducting a content analysis of students’ laboratory notebooks and reports. Content analysis is a methodology that encourages inferencing "across distinct domains, from particulars of one kind to particulars of another kind" (Krippendorff,, 2019). Our intent is to learn about students' mastery of the engineering design and experimentation process through analyzing their lab notebooks. We will present the results of a preliminary content analysis of a select sample of those notebooks and genres.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1944653
- PAR ID:
- 10211170
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- 2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access Proceedings
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--34426
