writer identity is also supported when students canengage in the practice of writing and speaking outside of the idealized space of the classroom[7], and in contexts and situations where they can discuss effective strategies and challenges withpeers and mentors whose experiences mirror their own [18]. These spaces allow students to formcommunities of practice [11] where they can draw from and build on peer support [2] as theynavigate disciplinary conventions and communication requirements for the dissertation [18],proposals [4], conference presentations, journal articles, course papers, and other genresassociated with the professional practice of academic engineering researchers.Further, research informed by academic literacies theories suggests
Publishing for Two-Year College Faculty and StudentsThe Journal of Advanced Technological Education Special Project (J ATE) was a one-year pilotfunded through NSF’s DUE ATE program whose goal was to build a community of peer-reviewed published authors from technical and community colleges. The “publish or perish”academic aphorism of the 4-year university tenure system does not cross over to communitycolleges, and community college faculty face many barriers to pursuing scholarship [1], [2]. Twoof this project’s objectives that directly impact two-year college faculty were 1) providing newwriters with professional development interactions with experienced writing coaches to supportthem in writing and publishing their work in a peer
follow-oncourses in our CS curriculum: a similar writing assignment in an Operating Systems (OS)course, and both written reports and formal presentations in a two-semester capstone course.We found that participation in ToC had a significant effect on the OS course’s outcomes,and similarly was a significant predictor for those of the capstone courses. OS course par-ticipation was an accurate predictor of capstone course performance, and similarly the firstsemester of capstone accurately predicted the second. Additionally, we found that peer re-viewing in ToC predicted OS writing performance and that the final ToC presentation waspredictive of capstone’s presentation scores. These results suggest that specific elements ofprior instruction for
toassign them busy work or other assignments that would not contribute to their major projects inthe course. It was also important to have the students write and/or revise previous writing duringas many classes as possible. Our solution to this was to distribute the sections for their finalwriting project throughout the semester. The mid-term paper, then, would contain any sectionswe had already covered together in class and the students had received peer and instructorfeedback on by that time. All assignments were prescribed with a detailed rubric for evaluation,which the authors encouraged the students to use as guidelines for producing quality writtenwork. As the semester proceeded, students were also asked for feedback on the rubrics
AI-Generated Performance Feedback ReviewsAbstract his empirical research, research brief paper, explores engineering students perceptions ofTAI-generated performance feedback reports (PFR) crafted from peer comments in a project-based learning (PBL) class.Peer feedbackis an effective tool for promoting accountability and reducing social loafing among student teams. However, students are often ill-equipped to write constructive, actionable feedback that helps their peers effectively improve their teamwork behaviors.Therefore, feedback literacyhas emerged as an important skill for students to develop in order to take action on the feedback they receive, and one of the key constructs of feedback
class module was conducted todemonstrate multiple methods of how to use genAI to improve writing and editing. This lecturealso covered how AI was being adopted across various engineering disciplines and industries toexpose students to broader trends in AI usage. This exposure allowed students to understand howtheir peers and future employers are integrating AI, potentially influencing their own decisions toadopt or reject AI in future tasks. This module relied on students having independentlycompleted written assignments prior to the start of the lecture. During the lecture, the instructorsshowed how to access the genAI tool Microsoft Copilot through an institutionally supportedwebsite. The lecture included demonstrations of how differently
.” The meeting frequency with their peer advisor are shown inFig.4. The scholars met with the peer advisor more frequently for the first year. When asked toprovide writing feedback regarding what they like the most of the members of their advisingteam, some students said “My peer advisor is a role model of who I want to be down the road in Figure 3: Meeting Frequency with faculty advisor over the years.my college career”, “I like my faculty and peer advisors for how nice they are and explain thingseasily.”, “I like that my PA is now a friend more than an advisor.”, “I like that my peer advisor isalso an engineering student so she can give me information and answer my questions about theprogram.” Figure 4: Meeting
, Somewhat Disagree, Neutral, Somewhat Agree, Strongly Agree). I found that participating in the Entrepreneurially-Minded (EM) Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SOTL) Virtual Writing Group (VWG) professional development experience… • Was a good use of my time. • Promote relationship development among participants • Enhanced networking opportunities. • Provide a useful protocol tool for peer feedback. • Offered greater reinforcement and understanding of the entrepreneurial mindset. • Explained potential dissemination outlets. • Highlighted the core components of writing a SOTL article. • Improved my writing skills. • Improved my research skills. • Improved my curriculum development skills. 2. Overall
-based Learning TeamsAbstractThis theory Research Brief paper aims to introduce an analysis of first-year students’development of feedback literacy through written reflections. Written feedback is an importantfeature of the workplace and the higher education environment. In project-based learningenvironments, peer evaluation is a popular tool to encourage the development of professionalskills in student teams. However, engineering students, especially in their first year of college, donot typically have training in writing effective feedback, which could compound interpretationchallenges. Recognizing this problem, recent studies in higher education have createdframeworks of feedback literacy to understand
to sheet metals using a combination of experimental, numerical and analytical methods to aid his teaching.Dr. Idris Kevin Mohammed, Imperial College London Idris is a Senior Teaching Fellow in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Imperial College London. He formerly did PhD research on the fracture of confectionery wafers and now lectures Design & Manufacture to second year Mechanical Engineering students. ©American Society for Engineering Education, 2025 The effect of imposed word limits on academic performance in technical reports written by Mechanical Engineering undergraduate studentsSummaryTechnical report writing is typically prevalent in all STEM-related undergraduate
improve thementee’s technical writing skills and gain general guidance about college life [5]. A near-peerframework in a mechatronics camp highlighted the importance of underrepresented minoritystudents being able to identify with a mentor [4]. A study of the impact of near-peer mentoring inan introductory engineering course found that “some students gained a better sense of placewithin engineering over the course of the semester” [6].Project ApproachThe authors did not plan this project as a research study. It was a response to a perceived need tohelp students acquire skills that employers expect them to have but report that recent graduatesoften lack. These non-technical, yet vitally important, skills are not formally taught in theircourses. In
,Chi-Sq).Figure 2: Student responses to the prompt “As a result of the [+1 or +3 Semester course], howhas your confidence with each of the following concepts or skills been affected?” *p<0.01 forChi-Squared comparison of response profiles between +1 and +3 Semester groups.As a whole, individual students reported that they contributed to most, but not all, technicalcommunications skills related to team deliverables (Figure 3). Equitable involvement wasreported by over half of all survey respondents for every task; and fewer than 10% of studentsreported less involvement on tasks than their peers. Report writing and data organizationdemonstrated the most involvement overall, with statistical analyses and data analysis having theleast
instructors to maximize peerlearning and communication skills in a third-year mechanical engineering course. Thisincorporates both (peer-to-peer) design reviews and reflection work for a computer aideddrafting (CAD) design project. To determine effectiveness, an anonymous Qualtrics survey wasdeveloped and administered to students to determine the impact on their learning experiences,skills, and engineering identity in Part I of the study. Previously, there was only one open-endedquestion that did not yield many responses regarding its impact. The continued study (Part II)seeks to address some of these issues and includes a re-administration of the Qualtrics survey toa second cohort of students in the class. The revised survey contains six new
Ensuring validity of methods After coding large amounts of data, I needed to do a sanity check and see if the analysismade sense. I spoke with my advisor about the codebook to ensure that it was clear andconsistent. Then I reviewed all of the interview data again while doing a second round of codingto label each previously coded section with a specific subtheme. This was an opportunity torevise any codes that no longer made sense, but I found that I generally agreed with my firstround of coding. If there was a particularly difficult quote, I checked with a peer or my advisorto see their interpretation. 6.2.4 Efficiently combining themes to write the case report Details and evidence of assertions in the case report need to be
assignments leading up to the technical report,students are asked to either write a draft section for the report and/or revise a previous draftbased on instructor feedback. With each draft section, students were also asked to select anexcerpt from their draft that showcased at least one of the techniques from the Civil EngineeringWriting Project [13] that were covered in class. When revising their drafts, students were askedto provide a statement describing how they addressed the feedback received on their draft. Thepurpose of these statements is to encourage students to reflect and intentionally consider howthey can implement good writing practices.For both the policy memo and Op-Ed assignments, students are assigned to peer review two oftheir
) appraising the original scale, (3) understanding the context of graduatestudent communication, (4) adapting and developing items, (5) aligning items with SDT andgraduate student experiences, (6) validating content and testing usability, and (7) preparing thetool for deployment. These steps ensured that the COMM-FLOWS tool remained boththeoretically grounded and practically relevant for assessing how engineering graduate studentsnavigate advisor-student and peer-peer interactions, scholarly writing, and professionalpresentations.This study makes two novel contributions to graduate engineering education. First, it introducesa decision-aid approach to communication assessment by transforming COMM-FLOWS from astatic diagnostic instrument into an active
Student FIGURE 1: Key contributors to a successful mentoring program. There are also peer mentoring programs available. Many of these programs are tailored tohelp incoming students get involved with research early. For example, the Office of UndergraduateResearch (OUR) peer mentor (PM) program [10] at the University of Nevada is a year-longprogram that pairs freshmen with students who have prior research experience. OUR PM hasvirtual research readiness workshops on lab safety, writing a research paper, and preparing aneffective poster presentation [10]. Similarly, Kennesaw State University (KSU) has a peerambassador program [11] to support UREs. They work with students who are accepted to the first-year scholars’ program. The first
equation [2], StudyHabitsi represents the number of hours a student i spends onacademic activities including studying, reading, writing, completing homework, and conductinglab work. Xi includes covariates that measure experience with high school and college academicwork for grade in addition to the student characteristics described in equation 1.Gradesic = 𝛼 + 𝛽1Xi + 𝛽2SenseofBelongingi + 𝜀 i (3)In this third equation [3], SenseofBelongingic measures the sense of belonging of student i incourse c. This includes various measures of sense of belonging, such as peer support, facultysupport, comfort in the classroom, and sense of belonging in the classroom and STEM field. Keymeasures incorporated in
for project managementand ensure teams worked through a process to complete a project. Because the course was two-credit hours, a 50-minute lecture was scheduled weekly on Wednesday afternoon, and a one-hour(1hr)/40-minute lab was scheduled weekly for Friday morning. The lecture portion providedopportunities for instructors to inform students about weekly topics to be integrated into courseassignments and reports. The 1hr/40-minute lab sessions were less structured to allow for workingteam meetings, with individualized instructor support, and time for mock presentations, writing,or project planning sessions. The end result for the course was a 15-minute presentation with 5-minute Q&A session and a comprehensive report that allowed
” and communicate that forward to their peers. Our tentative plan is to ask next year’s(now this year’s) students to test and comment on the revised versions and iterate further.Grant writing The third deliverable was again collaboratively written on teams; this time, the task wasto draft a grant proposal to a fictional government agency offering funds for projects usingmagnets in novel ways. In this case, we provided a lecture content and recommendations aheadof the project to familiarize students with typical features of grant proposals, with particularemphasis on establishing the need, using key evidence from their lab work to support theirproposal, and building a cohesive credible argument for their proposed idea across all sections
technical/professional communications into thecourse and emphasizing those skills inherent to the KEEN 3Cs have been to: 1. Provide opportunities for students to collaborate with a diverse and multidisciplinary group with different backgrounds. 2. Create a course where students can develop a broader perspective on problem-solving and innovation. 3. Enhance students’ abilities to make connections between background knowledge, new knowledge, and to integrate diverse knowledge and skillsets. 4. Emphasize the need to adapt communication styles for various audiences while giving students opportunities to improve through the writing process: draft, revise, and provide feedback to peers, and utilize feedback from their
learning and helpinstructors enact cognitive, social, and epistemological learning goals related to active learning[4], [23]. For example, concept questions are commonly used within Peer Instruction (PI) [12], ateaching practice that asks students to complete a concept question, asks them to talk to theirpeers about the answer choices, and then asks students to redo it. PI has been shown to promoteimproved learning outcomes [5], [12], [13], [24] - [30], making teaching practices that utilizeconcept questions promising to probe into student understanding.In this study, students were often asked to justify their answer choice in writing. Such a practiceencourages writing-to-learn (WTL) through a low-stakes reasoning task. WTL in STEM classeshas been
, it is important for me that the AItouches my writing only so much as a peer review will touch, not too much that my ideas willchange.” The idea of using GenAI only in ways that could be reasonably replicated by a humanis something that also comes up in interviews, which we discuss below. What appears to be keyto students’ commentary on the use of GenAI as it relates to writer’s voice is that their creativity,individuality, and humanity is preserved.In summary, survey responses reveal that students are generally confident in their ability to writewell without GenAI and express a preference for doing so, with 90% and 66% of participantsagreeing or strongly agreeing with these respective statements. Qualitative responses furtheremphasize the
below as an example, though as campus partnersprovide more documents to The Citadel, the list can change. As only four options are provided,multiple groups may select the same topic. 1. Stream restoration project 2. Shrimping industry policy amendment 3. Telecom Network installation 4. Water treatment residual management planProject 1 Deliverable: As an EIS is a written document; students are instructed that they willpractice their written communication skills. The groups must collaboratively write a 500-100-word professional style memorandum to summarize the key aspects of their selected EIS for animaginary company supervisor. This requires them to review the EIS- which is 250 pages ormore- then create a summary of no more than
Engineering was helping students to develop these skills for theirresearch thesis, as well as their career success within and outside academia. Through a survey ofChemical Engineering graduate alumni, meetings with graduate supervisors, and focus groupswith current graduate students we learnt that research skill training was not equitable:respondents reported that training was highly variable, supervisor dependent, and typicallydelivered via peer mentorship from senior graduate students. While the value of peer-to-peerlearning is reflected in the literature and is central to our course pedagogy [9], students wereconcerned about consistent quality and authority without commensurate engagement fromfaculty. Graduate students described seeking
Schenectady, NY 12308AbstractFemale representation in mechanical engineering remains a critical challenge for academicinstitutions committed to fostering diversity and inclusivity. At Union College, the genderdisparity is evident, with female enrollment in the Mechanical Engineering departmentdeclining from 22.5% in the freshman cohort to only 13.3% by senior year. To address thisgap, the department has introduced initiatives aimed at supporting and retaining femalestudents through structured mentorship, peer support, and career development programs.Key among these efforts is the Female Student Mentor Project, which pairs senior studentswith underclassmen to foster academic confidence and professional growth. Additionally,regular networking events
representation of it to others?By meaningfulness, I mean the scholar genuinely engages with the realities of the researchendeavor, which include: production of new knowledge; engagement with human participants;positional, epistemological, and ontological complexities; analysis of complex social dynamics;and/or communication of that process to others 1. By performativity, I typically mean writingtowards the expected topics of a research paper but with filler content that does not reckon withthese deeper realities. This sort of methods section has certain trademarks—perfunctory, cookiecutter writing that looks the same in every paper, follows rules without thinking about whetherthey apply, and reveals details that are normatively assumed while not
Education, 2025 Implementing Mini Modules in Core Mechanical Engineering Courses to Enhance Student EngagementAbstractActive learning promotes student engagement by emphasizing their active role in the learningprocess, contrasting with traditional lecture-based teaching. This study explores theimplementation of four active learning strategies in a senior-level Mechanical Engineering course(Heat Transfer) at Western New England University: peer discussions, weekly self-assessedquizzes, flexible assignment deadlines, and self-selected team formation for collaborativeprojects. These strategies were designed to be easy to adopt without compromising lecture timeor content coverage. Surveys and feedback help to understand the
? (Likert) 4. How well do you understand the value of being a mentee, being mentored by someone? (Likert) 5. Rank order your primary learning goals for the team project. • CAD • Real-world design process • Team collaboration • Technical communication • Engineering analysis 6. How comfortable are you with working in pairs or small groups? (Likert) 7. What challenges, if any, have you faced working in a team environment in the past? 8. Rank order your preferred learning styles. • Visual • Auditory • Kinesthetic (manipulate or touch material to learn) • Reading/writing 9. Have you participated in peer-assisted learning before
$1M in research grants to study writing transfer of engineering undergraduates. For technical research, he has a long-standing involvement in research concerned with the manufacturing of advanced composite materials (CFRP/titanium stack, GFRP, nanocomposites, etc.) for marine and aerospace applications. His recent research efforts have also included the fatigue behavior of manufactured products, with a focus on fatigue strength improvement of aerospace, automotive, and rail structures. He has been the author or co-author of over 200 peer-reviewed papers in these areas.Dr. Charles Riley P.E., Oregon Institute of Technology Dr. Riley has been teaching mechanics concepts for over 10 years and has been honored with