Assessment and characterization of writing exercises and core engineering textbooks

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Writing has been identified as a critical skill and element of the engineering profession, yet it is rarely included in sophomore-level and junior-level courses. Textbooks often influence how courses are structured, and reading assignments and homework problems are frequently assigned directly from textbooks. In this project, textbooks are systematically searched for writing-based problems in four core engineering courses: fluid mechanics, thermodynamics, statics, and circuits. The authors focused efforts on identifying learning activities that could potentially allow students to practice writing, learn through writing, and use writing to relate course content to broader applications and contexts. Results included the total number of end-of-chapter questions with writing components and the classification of types of writing prompts. Analysis showed a limited availability of questions with writing components in textbooks and a missed opportunity to incorporate important writing education within the context of technical engineering concepts.

Engineering instructors on writing: Perceptions, practices, and needs

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Background- With communication skills deemed increasingly important for engineering graduates, we wanted to understand how writing is currently included in engineering classes, what challenges are caused by including writing in such classes, and what resources would be most useful to help engineering instructors more easily include writing in engineering classes. Literature review- Writing is a necessary skill for engineering graduates and has received increased attention in engineering classes. However, despite many instructors’ beliefs that writing is an important skill for engineers, it is not typically taught in a systematic and comprehensive way across the engineering curriculum. Research questions- 1. What perceptions of writing, and specifically writing in engineering, do engineering instructors hold? 2. To what extent do engineering instructors report incorporation of writing activities and assignments in their classes? 3. What barriers do engineering instructors perceive as inhibiting the inclusion of more writing in engineering courses? 4. What resources do engineering instructors desire to expand and improve the inclusion of writing in engineering courses? Research methods: A survey was completed by engineering instructional staff (n = 190 respondents, 10.7% response rate) from seven institutions as well as by some members of the Big10+ Engineering Deans Mailing List. Instructors were asked about their general perceptions about writing in engineering and were also asked to consider the most recent engineering course that they taught and reflect on how they included (or did not include) writing in their course. Findings and conclusions- As expected, we found that most engineering instructional staff agree that writing skills are very important in engineering. Yet, we found that constraints on time and resources kept instructors from including more writing in their courses. This paper concludes with a discussion of our efforts to develop resources, such as rubrics, graded writing examples, and strategies for developing writing prompts, to help instructors include more writing in their engineering courses.

Why this flip wasn’t a flop: What the numbers don’t tell you about flipped classes

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This paper details the conversion of a large, required Civil Engineering fluid mechanics course into a more student-centered, active learning-oriented course through the flipping of one lecture per week. In the flipped class, students collaboratively solve homework problems in groups while receiving “expert” feedback from instructors and TAs. To offset the lost lectures, some course material that has been delivered in traditional lectures has been placed online in the form of short videos and textbook readings, with low-stakes quizzes for assessment.

Student learning gains were quantitatively assessed by comparing quiz and final exam scores for three semesters (1 pre-flip and 2 post-flip). To maintain some element of consistency across the course transformation, a comprehensive, multiple-choice final exam has served to provide quantitative metrics on which the course improvement can be gaged. In addition, quiz questions remained relatively similar across semesters. One-way ANOVAs revealed a statically significant difference on quiz performance, with post-flip students performing better than those in pre-flip semesters. In addition, students in the final iteration of the course transformation significantly outperformed previous students on final exams by about 7%.

Taken together, the numbers suggest that the process of flipping a large fluid mechanics course is associated with small but positive improvements to quiz and final exam performance. However, it is best to rely on other indicators beyond course performance in order to more accurately depict the impact of a course transformation. To supplement the results of the quantitative analyses, student comments about the course and instructor observations of the transformation implementation were assessed. Students found the work sessions to be very effective, enjoyed collaborating with peers and the instructor, and thought the online videos were helpful. The instructor indicated that the benefits of the flipped class include the following: heightened student engagement during class periods; greatly increased instructor awareness of student perceptions, challenges, personal issues, and conceptual bottlenecks; eventual reduction in instructor preparation time; improved instructor-student relationships; and a better focus on more important course objectives.

Challenges and opportunities for recruiting students to undergraduate civil engineering programs

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Society needs more civil engineers, with the projected near-term need for civil engineers greater than any other engineering discipline. Ailing national infrastructure and projected retirement rates have led to job projections suggesting that the near-term need for civil engineering graduates is almost double that of any other engineering discipline. This need, combined with other attractive attributes of civil engineering, should make civil engineering a top engineering major at many undergraduate universities. In spite of the career opportunities readily available to graduating civil engineers, and in spite of the general increasing trend in the number of total undergraduate engineering students, undergraduate civil engineering programs, taken as a whole, have struggled to maintain and grow their numbers. Individually, many undergraduate programs struggle to recruit students to civil engineering, and this poses a major problem not only to individual programs but to the profession itself.

We analyzed a set of civil engineering student surveys to determine the factors, attitudes, and experiences that typically lead students to select careers in civil engineering and found several common responses, many of which can be leveraged to promote the discipline. The data suggest that about one half of our students pre-select civil engineering prior to beginning as first-year engineering students, and that the top reasons for their selection of civil engineering include: a passion for building things; a desire to make a difference; flexible career options; and a love for math and science (which presumably is shared by young engineers of all disciplines).

We present data from another survey carried out with undergraduate students in other engineering majors, as to why students select other disciplines and how civil engineering is perceived. This survey highlights several perceptions about civil engineering among first year engineers. These include the misperception of civil engineering as a narrow field focused only around bridges, buildings, and roads, as well as the perception of civil engineers earning low salaries.

These student perceptions pose challenges to civil engineering recruiters, but also afford opportunities for clarification and improved recruitment, especially for programs that allow students to select their engineering discipline during their first year of college. We conclude this paper with a set of talking points we have deployed at our own university that directly address the above challenges and opportunities.

Engineering faculty on writing: What they think and what they want

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Writing has been identified as an important skill for engineers, and while faculty generally agree that writing should be included in the engineering classroom, there are many barriers that may discourage faculty to do so. This survey explored how faculty are including writing in their classes, what barriers they face, and also asks faculty what resources they would like so that the inclusion of writing could be more realistic and feasible.

In terms of their approaches to incorporating writing in their courses, a majority of respondents reported sometimes or frequently assigning writing in the following types of assignments: project documentation, written explanations of homework, and short-answer questions on tests and quizzes. A majority of respondents also reported frequent use of grading rubrics for writing, as well as specifying the audiences for whom students should target their writing.

Respondents identified their top challenges to including writing in their courses, including large enrollments, lack of time, and lack of teaching assistants competent to assess writing. To address these challenges, the most favored suggestion was having teaching assistants trained to assess writing, followed by expanding the availability of writing resources for faculty and students. Additionally, the issue of student preparation was brought up on numerous occasions; faculty stated that previous negative experiences with student writing hindered faculty from including writing assignments in their courses.

In a perfect world, all faculty would have teaching assistants that were trained in teaching engineering writing. However, other more realistic resources include providing rubrics and sample work on an accessible and easy to use website. This paper reports on the faculty survey about writing and also how it relates the larger project that includes providing these important resources to faculty.

Writing to learn engineering: Identifying effective techniques for the integration of written communication into engineering classes and curricula (NSF RIGEE project)

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The inclusion of writing-based exercises in technical courses has multiple learning benefits to students. Writing exercises not only serve to improve students’ written communication skills (i.e., “learn to write”), but can also be leveraged to develop critical thinking skills and promote deeper understanding of technical concepts (i.e., “write to learn”). Nevertheless, while writing-intensive assignments are relatively common in upper-level technical courses, especially in the form of laboratory and project reports, writing is often absent in the larger, required core courses that are taken by large numbers of engineering students. This is a missed opportunity to both enhance student learning of technical content as well as missed chance for students to have more writing practice. This NSF RIGEE project aims to investigate, support, and promote the inclusion of writing in technical courses, particularly introductory and core courses. Analysis of an engineering instructor survey carried out as part of the project revealed concerns about assessment and feedback on students’ written work. Additionally, writing instructors were interested in the creation of guides designed to aid instructors in the creation and tailoring of writing prompts for use in their existing technical courses. This paper introduces preliminary resources we have created in response to these stated needs, in order to help instructors develop, implement, and assess writing assignments in their courses. Current resources include a decision tree to help instructors create writing assignments within their classrooms and assessment rubrics that can easily be adapted to specific writing assignment needs. Resources will continue to be developed during the remainder of the project, culminating in a writing website geared towards instructors.

Something to write home(work) about: An analysis of writing exercises in fluid mechanics textbooks

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Something to Write Home(work) About: An Analysis of Writing Exercises in Fluid Mechanics TextbooksAs assessments of learning outcomes are increasingly emphasized through accreditationrequirements (e.g., via ABET) and other quality assurance initiatives, written communication isone area that engineering instructors often find challenging to incorporate and assess. This isparticularly true in large core courses at the sophomore and junior levels. In this project, ananalysis of writing-based problems in fluid mechanics textbooks attempts to locate theavailability of activities that would allow students to practice writing, to learn through writing,and to use writing to relate course content to broader applications and contexts.This study is part of a larger ongoing project to understand and expand the incorporation ofwriting in large-lecture engineering courses, including investigation of faculty perspectives andtextbook assignments and assessments. This snapshot of writing-across-engineering will theninform efforts to create a range of writing activities (and assessment methods), mapped to ABETlearning outcomes, that instructors can incorporate in large engineering classes. Our objective isto examine widely-used textbooks in thermodynamics, materials, circuits, statics, and dynamics.In the preliminary analysis reported in this paper, we study problem sets from five popular fluidmechanics textbooks to find problems requiring more than merely numerical or calculatedanswers. As these writing-based problems are identified, we will categorize them in terms of thetype of prompt they represent, such as asking for explanation of a solution, application of aconcept to real-world examples, or problem-solving that requires description of processes.Once the number and types of writing problems in these textbooks has been analyzed andorganized, we will further explore how well the texts support actually using these exercises inclass. While writing-based prompts might be present, for example, instructors might not havethe resources, expertise, and/or support needed to incorporate them in their classes. Morespecifically, examination of solution sets and instructor’s guides will reveal how much thetextbooks equip instructors to assign and then assess the writing prompts that do exist. Finally,the extant writing assignments will be mapped to ABET learning outcomes to see how promptscan potentially be used to address key learning outcomes, e.g., in relation to the studentoutcomes in ABET Criterion 3.The result of this analysis will be an understanding of how well popular fluid mechanicstextbook assignments guide students in writing, and how well the textbooks equip instructors tomake use of those assignments. We will use this data to identify areas in which more writingassignments and assessment training would be useful for the teaching of engineering. This paperwill likely be of particular interest to faculty and staff interested in using writing to support avariety of technical, professional, and global learning outcomes in core engineering courses.

Writing to learn engineering: Identifying effective fechniques for the integration of written communication into engineering classes and curricula (NSF RIGEE project)

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The inclusion of writing-based exercises in technical courses has multiple learning benefits to students. Writing exercises not only serve to improve students’ written communication skills (i.e., “learn to write”), but can also be leveraged to develop critical thinking skills and promote deeper understanding of technical concepts (i.e., “write to learn”). Nevertheless, while writing-intensive assignments are relatively common in upper-level technical courses, especially in the form of laboratory and project reports, writing is often absent in the larger, required core courses that are taken by large numbers of engineering students. This is a missed opportunity to both enhance student learning of technical content as well as missed chance for students to have more writing practice. This NSF RIGEE project aims to investigate, support, and promote the inclusion of writing in technical courses, particularly introductory and core courses. Analysis of an engineering instructor survey carried out as part of the project revealed concerns about assessment and feedback on students’ written work. Additionally, writing instructors were interested in the creation of guides designed to aid instructors in the creation and tailoring of writing prompts for use in their existing technical courses. This paper introduces preliminary resources we have created in response to these stated needs, in order to help instructors develop, implement, and assess writing assignments in their courses. Current resources include a decision tree to help instructors create writing assignments within their classrooms and assessment rubrics that can easily be adapted to specific writing assignment needs. Resources will continue to be developed during the remainder of the project, culminating in a writing website geared towards instructors.

Adventures in paragraph writing: The development and refinement of scalable and effective writing exercises for large-enrollment engineering courses

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Adventures in paragraph writing: the development and refinement of scalable and effective writing exercises for large enrollment engineering coursesThe ability to communicate effectively is a highly desirable attribute for today’s graduatingengineers. Additionally, the inclusion of communication components in technical courses hasbeen shown to enhance learning of technical content and can be leveraged to satisfy non-technical learning outcomes. However, the incorporation of such components in undergraduateengineering curricula remains challenging due to resource limitations, credit hour crunches, andother issues. This paper presents the design considerations and preliminary results from ourongoing work to create an effective, transferrable, low-overhead approach to paragraph writingexercises suitable for inclusion in any large engineering course. Key considerations in thedevelopment of these exercises include: identification of the motivations and learning outcomesfor each exercise; development and tailoring of writing prompts (questions) appropriate for theseoutcomes; and the development and implementation of an assessment and feedback strategy,including resource-efficient grading rubrics and techniques.Results are reported from the application of the paragraph writing exercise in a large civilengineering undergraduate fluid mechanics course (120 students; approximately 15assignments). A primary focus of this first application centered on two key components thatmust be refined in order for the exercise to be effective and transferrable: (1) the selection ofwriting prompts, and (2) assessment and feedback. Analysis of student paragraphs highlights theimportance of the writing prompts in the success of the exercise, indicating that specific wordchoice, question focus, and supplemental instruction greatly affected the level of writing studentssubmitted. Some writing prompts were selected to address and enhance technical content in thecourse, while other writing prompts were developed to broaden student awareness of engineeringin societal, environmental, and global contexts. In addition to developing productive writingprompts, the assessment and feedback strategies were evaluated using student surveys andfeedback. While minimal marking and holistic rubric assessment methods proved effective froma grading resource standpoint, students were frustrated by the lack of feedback associated withthese techniques and uncomfortable with the holistic grading rubric. Data from student surveyspoint to the importance of giving meaningful feedback to students, and providing them withopportunities to revise their written submissions. Student surveys also highlighted an unforeseenobstacle to the exercise: student resistance to writing in technical courses. We provide severalsuggestions for overcoming student resistance, as well as improved assessment and feedbackstrategies that better meet student needs while still not over-burdening instructors and teachingassistants.