Improving The Engineering And Writing Interface: An Assessment Of A Team Taught Integrated Course

AbstractThis paper presents the results of a preliminary investigation into second-year engineering students’ attitudes towards writing. Our study assesses what effect, if any, the presence of engineering faculty as part of a teaching team has on students’ perceptions of the importance of writing to engineering and the overall quality of student writing. Sophomore Engineering Clinic I, planned and taught by faculty from the College of Communication and the College of Engineering, combines argumentative discourse, technical communication, and engineering design labs. While the course is jointly planned, it had previously been individually delivered. Worth four credits, three credits were devoted to writing and one to engineering design. As part of the present study, engineering faculty are attending 2 of the 4 writing sections. They actively join in class discussions, assist in peer critiques, ask questions, seek clarifications, and provide real life engineering examples. The remaining 2 sections are taught solely by Communication faculty. We suspect that engineering students allocate more time to their design projects, even though the writing assignments are more heavily weighted. We also suspect that students do not see connections between engineering problem solving and writing problem solving. Rather, they see writing as an ancillary tool that follows the “real” work of engineering. To test these assumptions, a survey was administered to all sections of the course. The survey asks a range of questions about the amount of time, effort, and revision the students usually apply to writing assignments. At the end of the term, the survey will be given again and results will be analyzed for significant patterns and measurable shifts. In addition to the survey, all faculty are keeping a log of classroom observations. Logs detail events and activities, as well as the students’ responses, in all sections, and will provide a qualitative context for the survey results. Our findings will be used to conceptualizethe teaching and learning interactions that materialize in a team- teaching situation, to develop future directions for assessment of the value of team-