“An ability to develop and conduct appropriate experimentation, analyze and interpret data, and use engineering judgment to draw conclusions” is a fundamental outcome of all engineering programs. Students conduct laboratory experiments in all areas of engineering and report on their findings. New faculty, however, have little experience or training in how to develop effective lab report assignments and instruct students on how to write laboratory reports. In an effort to improve both the teaching and learning of laboratory report writing, engineering educators from three distinct universities (one large public research university, one small public polytechnic university, and one private undergraduate university) developed a series of online laboratory report writing instructional modules. These modules were presented to laboratory instructors, half with less than four years of teaching experience—at a Community of Practice (CoP) retreat in the spring of 2022. Focus groups were conducted with the instructors to determine the potential benefits and shortcomings of the modules, after which the modules underwent significant revisions. Near the conclusion of the CoP retreat, participants reported feeling motivated to implement the newly revised modules to improve their laboratory report writing instruction. Follow-up focus groups were conducted in the following winter to determine if this motivation remained high throughout the summer and resulted in the development of new and improved laboratory assignments in the new academic year. The paper will briefly introduce the modules and present the results of these focus group meetings.
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This content will become publicly available on June 25, 2024
Refining Instructional Modules for Engineering Lab Writing Using a Community of Practice Approach
Laboratory report writing instructional modules have been developed and refined using a community of practice (CoP) approach. Supported by the National Science Foundation Improving Undergraduate STEM Education initiative, researchers at three institutions have refined and reorganized a series of scaffolded laboratory writing modules based on the work of faculty and graduate students at a CoP meeting. This paper documents the process used at the CoP meeting where draft modules were made available and a model laboratory session was considered. Other published laboratory report writing resources were evaluated alongside the draft modules to determine areas of overlap and novelty and to ensure the completeness of the revised modules. The process of revising instructional modules was valuable for both the quality
of the modules and the development of the community of practice. The modules are now organized into two guides, published at http://labs.wsu.edu/engineeringlab-report-writing/. An Instructor’s Guide to Engineering Lab Writing, targets instructors and provides model lab writing and data analysis learning outcomes for consideration when planning a laboratory session, as well as approaches for course organization and teaching to support lab writing outcomes. A library of lab report types and a model rubric for lab report scoring complete the instructor-oriented resource. A Student’s Guide to Engineering Lab Writing, supports students who are learning lab report writing for the first time or are advancing as
technical writers. It is organized according to traditional lab report format and is aligned with the learning outcomes in the instructor modules. The content in the student-oriented modules is scaffolded to support continuous development. The modules are arranged in order of increasing cognitive difficulty, first addressing formatting conventions and arrangement, then section contents and methods of data analysis, and finally effective methods of interpretation, reasoning, and conclusion writing.
This paper demonstrates the mutually reinforcing nature of collaboratively developed instructional material and the growth of a community of practice. The CoP approach to structuring a meeting was effective for gathering targeted and relevant feedback in a short period of time as well as for developing the CoP itself. The instructional modules revised at the CoP
meeting were significantly improved creating a sense of ownership and inclusion by those participating in the meeting. They are now publicly available to serve a growing community of practice focused on engineering lab writing.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1915318
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10427302
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- ASEE annual conference exposition
- ISSN:
- 2153-5965
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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