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Engineering undergraduate programs offer a variety of laboratory courses that aim to give students hands-on experience with engineering practices while also assigning lab report writing that builds communication skills within their major. This study aims to investigate how engineering programs of a branch campus in a land-grant research university offer writing education in undergraduate lab courses. Among numerous electrical engineering and mechanical engineering course offerings at the university, nine undergraduate engineering lab courses were chosen for this study. To begin, the purpose, content, environment, and grading contribution of the chosen labs were surveyed. Then, the materials provided to students in relation to lab report assignment were investigated using nine lab report writing outcomes defined in earlier studies. Finally, the provided evaluation criteria of the lab reports were studied using the same nine outcomes. The lab report writing outcomes used in the study include 1) address technical audience expectations, 2) present experimental processes, 3) illustrate lab data using appropriate graphic/table forms, 4) analyze lab data, 5) interpret lab data, 6) provide an effective conclusion, 7) develop ideas using effective reasoning and productive patterns, 8) demonstrate appropriate genre conventions, and 9) establish control of conventions for a technical audience. We concluded that, regardless of major or program level, the primary purpose and contents of the course materials were usually categorized as educational and experimental, respectively. The secondary purpose and contents were predominantly developmental and analytical. Additionally, we found that most courses explicitly addressed outcomes related to report organization, data presentation/analysis/interpretation, and writing conventions. However, the outcome related to developing ideas using effective reasoning and productive patterns was not proven to have been explicitly covered in any of the courses studied. Finally, we found that though many of the courses studied had explicitly addressed these outcomes, fewer courses directly assessed the nine outcomes. It can be interpreted that engineering students might struggle with the inconsistency between the assignment and the assessment in lab report writing.
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Mapping Writing Concepts Across an Undergraduate Physics Curriculum
Technical communication is essential for a career in physics, but communication skills are often not explicitly taught in physics undergraduate curricula. As a starting point for curricular integration, we investigated where and how writing is currently occurring in the core undergraduate physics courses at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. We examined course materials to identify where writing is explicitly or implicitly referenced, the genres that were assigned, and writing concepts that were represented. Analyzing course materials allowed us to identify a wide range of activities and assignments related to writing. We observed that implicit references to writing are prevalent, writing activities are weighted toward upper-level classes, and the most common genres are related to laboratory activities. Writing concepts that occurred frequently in upper-level laboratory courses correspond to disciplinary values of precision and clarity, while concepts of novelty and evidence were infrequent. This type of assessment can help identify gaps in the curriculum, allowing us to be more deliberate about how we develop students’ communication skills.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2013443
- PAR ID:
- 10572313
- Publisher / Repository:
- ASEE Conferences
- Date Published:
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Location:
- Portland, Oregon
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--47761
