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Engineering undergraduates’ academic writing experiences prior to entry-level engineering lab courses can be classified into three different groups: a group with both rhetorically-focused writing (e.g., first-year-composition) and technical writing courses; a group with only rhetorically-focused writing courses; and a group with no rhetorically-focused writing or technical writing courses. Using a lens of transfer theories that explain how much knowledge from one context is used or adapted in new contexts, these three groups can be called concurrent, vertical, and absent transfer groups respectively. This study, which is part of a larger project developing and implementing writing-focused modules in engineering labs, aims to investigate undergraduates’ perspectives on readiness, writing transfer, and effectiveness of writing instructions in engineering lab report writing through a student survey. End-of-term online surveys (n = 40) of undergraduates in entry-level engineering lab courses were collected from three distinctive universities: an urban, commuter, public research university; an urban, private, teaching-focused university; and a rural, public, teaching-focused university. The survey questions have three parts: 1) student perspectives in writing in engineering disciplines; 2) how students use prior writing knowledge when writing lab reports in engineering lab courses; and 3) how engineering lab course writing instructions impact students’ engineering lab report writing. Findings suggest that the three transfer groups present statistical distinctions on the readiness of writing engineering lab reports (concurrent group as the highest and absent group as the lowest). The three groups also show different perspectives on how their freshmen writing courses contributed their engineering lab report writing. The concurrent transfer group believed freshmen writing instruction regarding “focus on purpose” contributed most when they write lab reports, while the greatest number of vertical transfer group students mentioned “knowledge about format and structure” was most helpful. Many absent transfer students valued “identifying problems or questions” instructed from their freshmen writing-intensive philosophy course as the content they used most when writing lab reports. Ultimately, the analysis of the data suggested that despite their perceived preparedness for writing lab reports, most of the students felt their skills improved as a result of engaging in lab report writing activities. 

Engineering undergraduates are exposed to a variety of writing curricula, such as first-year-composition courses, in their early program of study; however, they have difficulties meeting the expectations of writing in early engineering courses. On the other hand, instructors in entry-level engineering lab courses struggle to instruct lab report writing due to a wide range of student background in writing. When using the lens of learning transfer theories, which describe the processes and the effective extent to which past experiences affect learning and performance in a new situation, we can classify engineering students in three writing transfer modes: 1) concurrent transfer, which occurs when a rhetorically-focused technical writing class is taken concurrently or prior to engineering labs in the major; 2) vertical transfer, which occurs when a rhetorically-focused general education writing class is taken prior to engineering labs in the major; and 3) absent transfer, which occurs when no rhetorically-focused writing class exists (rather literature-focused) or writing-intensive courses are not required in the general education curriculum. This study aims to investigate how the engineering sophomore’s past writing experience affects their engineering lab report writing. Lab reports from four sophomore engineering courses (1 civil, 2 electrical, 1 general engineering) across three institutions collected for analysis consisted of two sets: the sample sets in early labs (for example, Lab 1) and in later labs (for example, the last lab) of the courses. A total of 46 reports (22 early and 24 later) were collected from 22 engineering sophomores during AY2019-2020. Four engineering faculty (1 civil, 1 electrical, and 2 mechanical engineering) developed a rubric based on lab report writing student outcomes, which are aligned with the existing outcomes such as ABET outcomes and the student outcomes from the Council of Writing Program Administrators (WPA). Data collected via early-later lab reports show that student outcomes related to writing conventions were scored high regardless of the transfer modes. The largest variations among three transfer modes were found in the student outcomes related to lab data presentation, analysis, and interpretation. In these outcomes, the concurrent transfer students had relatively high scores for both early and later reports, while the vertical transfer students improved their scores from relatively low in early reports to high in later reports. This research results show that the area of writing knowledge that has been most influenced by their writing curricula prior to sophomore engineering lab courses is disciplinary meaning-making through presenting, analyzing, and interpreting lab data for the technical audience.