Debunking the ‘Nerd’ Myth: Doing Action Research with First-year Engineering Students in the Academic Writing Class

Abstract

First-year engineering students are disinclined to view writing skills, and communication skills at large, as a core element of the engineering curriculum. Instead of arguing away this student skepticism, we aimed to harness it by way of an action research project in the writing class. Students were challenged to find out for themselves whether, and if so, which communication skills are important for professional engineers, and to write out their recommendations for the curriculum in a brief research paper. The teaching staff supported the research project by providing an online questionnaire, which 443 engineers filled out on the students' invitation, and by offering support sessions on academic writing, research and ICT skills. What the students learned from the questionnaire was that the respondents spend a significant amount of their working time communicating, while many of them struggle with several aspects of both written and oral communication. Abandoning their initial beliefs, the students recommended in their papers that communication skills take a central place in the engineering curriculum. The action research approach helped students develop not only their academic writing skills, but also their attitudes towards communication courses and, more generally, their understanding of 21 st century engineering.

Exploring Engineering instructors’ views about writing and online tools to support communication in Engineering

“…presentations and projects in regard to importance for industry and being motivating, it was valued less on both. This finding is consistent with evidence that students do not value writing and would therefore not find it motivating (Lievens 2012), which suggests academics were relatively accurate in this perception. Projects were seen as having the most value in learning.…”

“…Writing is a legitimate practice in itself, but also provides opportunities to enhance generic thinking skills and conceptual understanding in discipline areas (Wheeler and McDonald 2000). While engineering students do not typically enter the discipline for love of writing, it is an essential skill in the profession (Lievens 2012). Questions of supporting writing development become increasingly important when supporting growing international student populations to effectively communicate in English (Lax 2014).…”

“…Engineering work has become more collaborative and horizontal (Lievens 2012). Writing is now regarded as a central practice in the work of engineers who need to communicate their technical knowledge to a broad variety of audience (Boiarsky 2004;Leydens and Schneider 2009;Wheeler and McDonald 2000).…”

Teaching and Learning Writing Skills in a Technological Age: A Selective Mapping of Writing Apps Onto a Structured Model of the Writing Process

“…This given alone is a real eye-opener for the engineering students. Other results go on to show 3 The approach is described in greater detail in [11]. Over the past 5 years, around 1500 professional engineers have completed the questionnaire.…”

Akademisk fagskriving på ingeniørstudiet

“…Ei forklaring kan vere at studenten mister synet for det ho tidlegare meistra (eller i alle fall delvis meistra) når ho i sin nye studiekvardag blir overvelda av formelle krav, nye malar, nye fagkunnskapar og nye sjangrar (Bernadier, 2019;Jonsmoen & Greek, 2017). Ei anna forklaring kan vere at ingeniørstudentar generelt sett ikkje er så interessert i å skrive (Lievens, 2012;Shapiro, 1991).…”