“Developing Curriculum for a Multi-Course Interdepartmental Learning Community to Promote Retention and Learning for Underprepared Engineering Students”

by Rachel A. Milloy, Matthew Moberly, and Rebecca Powell | Xchanges 9.1

Confident Learners Collaboratively Investigate Real World Issues

Unit 3: Writing as an Engineer Website Project

So that students gain a broad understanding of what professionals do, the English 111 and SMET 101 learning objectives for Unit 3 include helping students prepare for the new requirements of engineering by exploring the nature of written communication in the profession. Like all units, this unit intends to help students improve writing, reading, and critical thinking skills. As mentioned, in Unit 2 students focused on identifying and analyzing a writer’s argument; Unit 3 builds on Unit 2 by asking students to use rhetorical skills to make an argument that ultimately answers the following question: “What does it mean to write as an engineer?” In the Unit 3 assignment, the Writing as an Engineer Website Project, we continue to emphasize the development of rhetorical skills because they play an important role in the new standards for engineering education as well as engineering professionals. As stated by the National Academy of Engineering in its discussion of the key attributes of contemporary engineers, “[An] increasing imperative for accountability will necessitate an ability to communicate convincingly and to shape the opinions and attitudes of other engineers and the public” (55). Unit 3 teaches students how rhetoric and communication work in various genres, such as a website, and for various audiences.

To answer the question “What does it mean to write as an engineer?” students work collaboratively to conduct both library and primary research. In SMET 101, students are asked to interview an engineering professor. Students then use this interview as support for their hypertext argument in the Website Project. In their investigation of engineering written communication, students address the following topics: types of written documents engineers produce; time spent on written communication; persuasion strategies engineers use in writing; types of audiences engineers address; an engineer’s writing process; content, organization, format, and style of engineering documents; communication channels and strategies professional engineers use; strategies for accessing and searching engineering information; and questions of ethics in professional engineering writing.

After students complete their interview and collect and analyze their research, they work with a partner to develop a website for a less knowledgeable audience about what it means to write as an engineer. This assignment challenges students in multiple ways by asking them to compose collaboratively with a peer, to make an argument about why writing matters, and to be self-directed learners capable of making rhetorical choices based on audience, purpose, genre, and context. During this unit of the semester, instructors “function as facilitators or co- or joint participants in the decision-making process as it pertains to [the student’s] learning” (Weimer 170). The assignment scaffolding teaches students to examine their own writing process and evaluate its effectiveness, to understand the recursive nature of writing, and to practice the traits of engineering communication.