Conference Session

Ethical Perspectives on the Grand Challenges of Engineering

Collection

2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Joseph R. Herkert, Arizona State University

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

of engineering ethics have reflected atone time or another on the barriers that the use of the “E-word” poses for capturing the attentionof engineering students and their academic advisers. A close reading of the overview essay(“Introduction to the Grand Challenges for Engineering”), however, reveals an underlyingphilosophy that Leo Marx has referred to as the “technocratic” view of progress that is either, atbest, indifferent to ethical considerations or, at worst, undermines engineering ethics.In his well known essay “Does Improved Technology Mean Progress?,”3 Marx contrasted theEnlightenment concept of progress that saw improved technology as a means to achieving socialprogress with the technocratic view that sees improved technology as

Conference Session

Community-Engaged Engineering Education Challenges and Opportunities in Light of COVID-19 Paper Presentations 2

Collection

2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access

Authors

William C. Oakes, Purdue University at West Lafayette ; Paul A. Leidig P.E., Purdue University at West Lafayette; Nusaybah Abu-Mulaweh, Purdue University at West Lafayette ; Andrew Pierce, Purdue University at West Lafayette; Jorge Martinez

Tagged Divisions

Community Engagement Division, Equity, Culture & Social Justice in Education, Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

student leaders through the process we hope willhelp prepare them for future challenges when they are in leadership positions on larger scales.References[1] Coyle, Edward J., Jamieson, Leah H., Oakes, William C, “EPICS: Engineering Projects in CommunityService”, International Journal of Engineering Education Vol. 21, No. 1, Feb. 2005, pp. 139-150.[2] Zoltowski, C. B., and Oakes, W.C., “Learning by Doing: Reflections of the EPICS Program”, Special Issue:University Engineering Programs That Impact Communities: Critical Analyses and Reflection, InternationalJournal for Service-Learning in Engineering, 2014, pp. 1-32.[3] Oakes, William, Andrew Pierce, Nusaybah Abu-Mulaweh, “Engagement in Practice: ScalingCommunity-based Design Experiences

Conference Session

'Diversity' and Inclusion? Pedagogy, Experiences, Language and Performative Action

Collection

2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access

Authors

Erin A. Cech, University of Michigan

Tagged Topics

Diversity

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

survey of engineering deans4 This research was supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation (grant 1539140; PI: StephanieFarrell; Co-PIs: Rocio Chavela Guerra, Erin Cech, Tom Waidzunas, and Adrienne Minerick). Any opinions,findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do notnecessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.and program directors in fall 2015 produced a list of eight deans willing to allow the survey to beadministered in their programs (see [25] for details). To protect confidentiality, I do not providethe names of the schools included in the study. Given that an institution’s participation in thestudy was determined by deans who were supportive of

Conference Session

Creating a Supportive and Nurturing Academic Culture

Collection

2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access

Authors

Joseph Francis Mirabelli, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Andrea J. Kunze, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Julianna Ge, Purdue University, West Lafayette; Kelly J. Cross, University of Nevada, Reno; Karin Jensen, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Tagged Topics

Diversity

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

documented stressors for engineering undergraduates [8, 18], theassociation of stress as part of engineering culture and how stress becomes normalized inengineering programs is understudied.The preliminary interview results suggest that engineering students are undereducated in terms ofmental health and available individual and institutional resources. Specifically, some participantscould not identify mental health and academic counseling resources readily available in theirengineering programs, suggesting a lack of accessibility. Participant responses also suggeststudents possess broad conceptualizations of stress, anxiety, and depression, as well as the effectsof each. Conceptualizations were nuanced and reflective of clinical definitions of these

Conference Session

Ethical Awareness and Social Responsibility in a Corporate/Team Context

Collection

2018 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Greg Rulifson P.E., Colorado School of Mines; Carrie J. McClelland P.E., Colorado School of Mines; Linda A. Battalora, Colorado School of Mines

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

thepassion these students found in their project, even though it was not hands-on, led them to amuch deeper and expanded understanding of their potential responsibilities as engineers in thefuture. Most students shied away from describe their work as contributing to social justice as itwas too politically charged and ambiguous. Some had taken an Engineering and Social Justicecourse, so the term came up, but was not actively used with a broad audience in their finalpresentations.Progress to dateEach PBL intervention has preliminary indications, anecdotal and through reflections, thatstudents were able to consider social responsibility and social justice issues in context withengineering problems in both technical and non-technical offerings.In the

Conference Session

Design, Assessment, and Redesign of Writing Instruction for Engineers

Collection

2018 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Rebecca Bercich, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology; Sarah Summers, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology; Phillip Cornwell, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology; James Mayhew, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

other words, thresholdconcepts support the goals of interdisciplinarity and portability by giving instructors and studentsa common language for identifying and building communication skills.In the sections that follow, we first describe the process we used to map TC across thecurriculum, including soliciting feedback from faculty about how well the flowchart reflects thepractices and goals of the department. Then, using memos as a test case, we suggest thresholdconcepts that could be used to scaffold memo writing across the curriculum. This test casedemonstrates the potential applications of the flowchart and threshold concepts to theinterdisciplinary teaching of TC. Finally, we outline the next steps for implementation with thegoal of

Conference Session

Social Responsibility and Social Justice I: Pedagogical Perspectives

Collection

2016 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Devin R. Berg, University of Wisconsin, Stout; Tina Lee, University of Wisconsin, Stout

Tagged Topics

Diversity

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

stand behind morals and ethics (n=2) • You must take into consideration all who might be effected by your work (n=2)From these responses we can see that some students were less influenced by the course when itcame to changing their outlook. It is unclear whether the lack of influence reflects that somestudents came into the course already sharing the viewpoint presented and their views did notchange for that reason or whether some inherently disagreed with the notions communicated inthis course and the course did not change their minds. These results may also indicate that greaterrepetition of these messages is necessary before the ideas take hold and they begin to mold moreclosely held beliefs such as their world views. Some examples of

Conference Session

Creative and Cross-disciplinary Methods Part II

Collection

2012 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Justin L Hess, Purdue University, West Lafayette; Jessica Erin Sprowl; Rui Pan, Purdue University, West Lafayette; Melissa Dyehouse, Purdue University; Carrie A. Wachter Morris, Purdue University; Johannes Strobel, Purdue University, West Lafayette

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

processes orproducts.21 Within this frame, they argued that the choices an engineer can make are always “acombination between objective criteria and subjective reflection” (p. 182f) and that the bestproduct would be designed “in the sense of care and compassion for the other in a socialcontext”. (p.183)21HumanitarianHumanitarian engineering is “a balance of technical excellence, economic feasibility, ethicalmaturity, and cultural sensitivity”. (p.1)22 It requires engineers to “design under constraints todirectly improve the wellbeing of underserved populations”. (p.2)22 These constraints might be“not just physical and economic, but also environmental, legal, political, cultural and ethical”.(p.2)23Haselkorn believed that engineers should apply

Conference Session

Communication: From Pecha Kucha to Bullets

Collection

2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Sandra Soto-Caban, Muskingum University; Emre Selvi, Muskingum University; Ferdinand Avila-Medina, Ohio State University, Newark

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

the PK style helped a majority of the students in understanding the information presented. This is in comparison with the traditional style. Page 22.831.4• 10 out of 15 students in the audience indicated that they liked the pace and format of the presentations. 2 were neutral and 3 students in the audience didn’t like the form used for presenting the material. 67% of the students in the audience indicated that they liked the pace and format of the presentations. This doesn’t reflect that they learned something from the presentation, but they found the presentations entertaining.• 11 out of 15 students in the audience

Conference Session

Myths About Gender and Race

Collection

2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Amy E. Slaton, Drexel University

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society, Minorities in Engineering, Women in Engineering

desire to become an engineer. 4, 10Individual agency is cast in such formulations as something which not only exists in meaningfulform among all students, of all backgrounds, but which, when present in sufficient amounts, candetermine a student's interior life (promoting the desirable activities of "self-regulation" or "self-reflection") and also his or her outwardly visible activities such as the attainment of goodgrades, or persistence. Skill acquisition and confidence are mutually supportive in many of theseanalyses, with both attainments in turn leading to success in college and the workplace. 11Negative interior experiences, such as anxiety and fear, also configure some students'performance and are seen to impede life success. While

Conference Session

Sustainability and Social Responsibility

Collection

2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access

Authors

Bryn Elizabeth Seabrook, University of Virginia; Kathryn A. Neeley, University of Virginia; Kari Zacharias, Concordia University; Brandiff Robert Caron, Concordia University

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

moststraightforward STS content of any CES course. Finally, the CES component of the capstonecourse requires students to perform a “Real-Time Technology Assessment” of their own project,incorporating sociotechnical thinking into the engineering design process. CES members have reflected a great deal on how to best maintain the critical eye towardtechnology and society that they bring from their STS training while participating in thepractical, day-to-day goings on of an engineering and computer science faculty. In a piece in thejournal Engineering Studies (the inaugural paper in the journal’s “Critical Participation”category), CES faculty described the tensions that result from the position of CES within afaculty of engineering. Locally, the place of

Conference Session

Social Justice, Social Responsibility, and Critical Pedagogies

Collection

2017 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Michael Lachney, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; David Adam Banks, University at Albany - SUNY

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

16If we add the legacies of violence that persist in engineering education and industry, to thepresent-day illusion of neutrality it becomes clear that the disciplines of engineering providelittle opportunity for practitioners to be reflective about their roles in perpetuating violence. Still,reflective research on the intersections of engineering/liberal education andengineering/sustainability appears to be growing.17 18 This research helps to support a vocalminority seeking alternative forms of engineering education that are not rooted in violence. Uponrecognizing the long-standing role of engineers as “hired guns” for the military-industrialcomplex, these educators and researchers use frameworks of peace19 and critical pedagogy20 topropose

Conference Session

Flexible Engineering Curricula

Collection

2017 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Leland Giovannelli, University of Colorado, Boulder; Robyn Sandekian, University of Colorado, Boulder

Tagged Topics

Diversity

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

. Itrecommended courses based on their relevance to the practice of global engineering, but itoffered no context within which students had to reflect seriously on global engineering itself.Consequently, students did not connect their coursework to global engineering and to theiridentity as engineers.Besides suffering a lack of focus, the GEC suffered a severe identity crisis, in that students,faculty, and staff repeatedly confused it with the IEC. There was no obvious difference betweenthe terms “International” and “Global.” The contrast was further blurred with the opening of anew Global Engineering Residential Academic Program, since it highlighted the importance ofworld language acquisition by engineers, rather than professional skills for

Conference Session

Design and Making

Collection

2017 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Alexandra Vinson, Northwestern University; Pryce Davis, University of Nottingham; Reed Stevens, Northwestern University

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

interviews with some of these earlycareer engineers as they participate in and reflect upon product design, process testing, datapresentation, and workflow planning. Our objective is to show how engineers conceptualize theusers of their products and take them into account during the design process. Our analysisfollows these engineers as they produce documents, drawings and presentations and highlightsthe role of more senior engineers who provide feedback and corrections to help the newengineers understand who the user of the product will be, what the user expects from the product,and how the company would like the user to behave.FindingsWe found that engineers anticipate the user of the products and systems they design and thatlearning about the

Conference Session

Embedding Sociotechnical Systems Thinking I

Collection

2018 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Natasha A. Andrade, University of Maryland, College Park; David Tomblin, University of Maryland, College Park

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

, therelationship of the stakeholder with infrastructure, and if they thought the stakeholder would bein favor, against, or unsure of adopting EVs. Instructors followed the student activity with adiscussion of the results. After class, the students had to reflect on the activity through an onlinequestionnaire (Table 2). Instructors led Day 2 with a short introduction to autonomous vehicles (AVs) and thestatus of the technology. Students were asked to answer four questions individually so that theycould start the thought process. Students were then placed in groups of 3-5 where they discussedtheir individual answers with each other. After this short discussion, students were instructed toread two articles that described several social issues related

Conference Session

Writing and Communication II

Collection

2016 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Sarah Liggett, Louisiana State University; Boz Bowles, Louisiana State University; Annemarie Galeucia, Louisiana State University; Warren R Hull Sr. P.E., Louisiana State University

Tagged Topics

Diversity

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

CxCprogram for students as well as to the satisfaction of all stakeholders, that we have exploredusing focus groups, a qualitative assessment method, somewhat atypical in the engineeringcommunity. At this stage in CxC’s development we opted for focus groups because we believedthat a more in-depth and open-ended approach to assessment lends itself to expanding ourcomprehensive reflection of the program to-date. More to the point, we were curious about theunique experiences of our students and wanted to know how they compared to previousassessments we’d performed about CxC.Key Findings of Previous AssessmentsFrom the beginning of the CxC program in the College of Engineering, faculty and CxC staffhave sought feedback on how to effectively implement

Conference Session

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society Division Technical Session 3

Collection

2019 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Jessica R. Deters, Virginia Tech; Marie C. Paretti, Virginia Tech; Christopher Zobel, Virginia Tech; Margaret Cowell, Virginia Tech; Jennifer L. Irish, Virginia Tech

Tagged Topics

Diversity

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

pedagogical benefits as wellas assessment and research data. Further, we extend the use of the concept maps themselves byincorporating participants’ written explanations of their post-course maps. Research on writing tolearn (WTL) suggests that such reflective practice can help deepen students’ conceptualunderstanding [14-16]; these written explanations, like the concept maps themselves, thus bothsupport student learning and enrich the data set.MethodsAs noted above, to assess graduate students’ understanding of both disciplinary concepts andconnections across disciplines, we use pre- and post-concept maps, administered at the beginningand end of the semester in the 3-hour course. Ethnographic field notes from both coursescomplement and contextualize

Conference Session

Maps, Metaphors, Tweets, and Drafts

Collection

2018 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Jared David Berezin, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

that the metaphors we speak reflect the “metaphors we live by” (i.e. howwe formulate thoughts and perform actions) has become the dominant thinking among cognitivescientists, linguists, psychologists, philosophers, literary critics, and composition and rhetoricscholars [3], [23]–[26]. Indeed the understanding of metaphor as more than an aesthetic tool canbe traced back to Aristotle, who remarked in Rhetoric, “Midway between the unintelligible andthe commonplace, it is metaphor which most produces knowledge” [27] ctd. in [26].In the seminal book, Metaphors We Live By, cognitive linguist George Lakoff and philosopherMark Johnson describe “conceptual metaphors” that are so embedded in our culture andconsciousness that they are “reflected in our

Conference Session

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society Division Technical Session 6

Collection

2019 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Benjamin David Lutz, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo; Nathan E. Canney, CYS Structural Engineers Inc.; Samantha Ruth Brunhaver, Arizona State University

Tagged Topics

Diversity

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

skills they had gained from their undergraduate experiences,and how prepared they felt to enter their jobs. Second, participants responded to weekly open-ended journal prompts in which they unpacked a significant challenge, accomplishment, orrealization. Questions were designed to ask participants to describe the specific event, theinvolvement of others, and their perceived learning as a result of the event. Third, participantswere interviewed at the end of the twelve-week journaling period. The interviews were againsemi-structured and designed to bring closure to the experience. During the third phase,interview questions focused on participant reflections of their experience in the school-to-worktransition and also provided space for them to

Conference Session

Rethinking Engineering Writing

Collection

2013 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Brad Jerald Henderson, University of California, Davis

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

class’ new engineering report assignment and method. Thestudents were assigned to write a one- to two-page reflective statement responding to the promptbelow. The students were directed to target as primary audience the Dean of the College ofEngineering, with peers and the instructor being a “transparent” secondary audience. Prompt: "How and why (or why not) did your experience working on the Lego car assembly line Report Project provide you with educational benefit(s) toward developing your engineering communication skills?” Page 23.15.15To remove instructor bias from the review of student feedback, the instructor solicited

Conference Session

Social Responsibility and Social Justice II: From Classroom to Community

Collection

2016 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Andrew Katz, Virginia Tech

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

effects of programmatic decisions on students.Those effects are then parlayed into a broader conversation about engineering education as awhole.This paper is an invitation to envision a more humanistic alternative to the unrestrained freemarket ideologies marshalling the state of affairs within engineering education. These sameideologies are steering the state of affairs elsewhere in society, but here we examine engineeringeducation as the local space that we occupy intellectually, physically, emotionally,epistemologically, and ontologically. Engineering education is a local reflection of a globalphenomenon. The paper begins with a brief contextual history of neoliberalism in highereducation before focusing on engineering education at Tulane. It

Conference Session

Writing and Communication

Collection

2017 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Amanda Simson, University of New Haven; Judy Randi Ed.D., University of New Haven; Amanda Lynn Becker, University of New Haven

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

writinginstructor present. The techniques were evaluated primarily by student reflection at the end of thesemester. Additionally, student writing assignments were evaluated to determine students’performance on selected writing tasks. Table 1 describes the writing tasks assigned throughoutthe course.Table 1: Assignments given in the Fall 2016 course Laboratory Module Assignments (all technical memos) Temperature Sensing Experiment Individually written Technical Memo (1 week turn around) Individually written revision (1 week turn around) Double Pipe Heat Exchanger Group-written Planning Report (1 week turn around) and

Conference Session

Liberal Education Division Technical Session Session 10

Collection

2019 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Ryan Ware, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Nicole Turnipseed, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign; John R. Gallagher, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; Celia Mathews Elliott, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; John S. Popovics, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; Paul Prior, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Julie L. Zilles, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

assignments Unpacking clarity Discussed terms like clarity and conciseness, trying to 5 (guest speaker) articulate what they mean Assignment design 6 workshop Workshopped assignments the participants brought in, discussed alignment with goals and ways to incorporate writing Assignment design process and scaffolding into the assignments 7 workshop Reviewed legal, ethical, pedagogical and research perspectives. Source use, citation 8 Did activities reflecting on multiple norms and the complexity and plagiarism of rephrasing technical

Conference Session

Writing and Communication

Collection

2017 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Stephanie Sheffield, University of Michigan; Robin Fowler, University of Michigan; Laura K. Alford, University of Michigan; Katie Snyder, University of Michigan

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

Design-Build-Test-Communicate ClassIntroductionIn the following paper, we describe our initial experiences in replacing the detailed analyticrubrics used for assessment in our team-taught first-year engineering technical andcommunication course with a holistic rubric. We address the issues we identified with theanalytic rubrics we had been using, the holistic rubric we developed to address these issues, andthe preliminary understandings we’ve developed--through our own reflections and an informalonline survey of our students--of the impact of this change on our teaching and our students’experiences in the course.Rubrics are frequently used to convey assessment criteria to students; their use in post-secondaryeducation has been shown to have

Conference Session

Writing and Communication II

Collection

2016 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Natascha Trellinger Buswell, Purdue University, West Lafayette; Brent K Jesiek, Purdue University, West Lafayette; Cary Troy, Purdue University, West Lafayette; Josh Boyd, Purdue University; Rebecca R Essig, Purdue University, West Lafayette

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

associated with – incorporating writing in engineering classes. The finalparts of the survey ask respondents to identify specific resources that might help them expandinclusion of writing in their courses, followed by a series of demographic questions to bettercharacterize the participant population. Most generally, the survey results suggest that facultyrecognize the need for and importance of writing in engineering, which is in part reflected intheir own courses. However, they continue to perceive challenges associated with includingwriting in engineering courses, with a particular emphasis on various resource constraints. Thepaper concludes with a brief overview of next steps, including plans for developing supportingresources for faculty and

Conference Session

Research on Diversification, Inclusion, and Empathy I

Collection

2016 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Lauren D. Thomas, University of Washington; Danielle L. Watt, Center for Chemistry at the Space Time Limit (CaSTL Center); Kelly J. Cross, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; Jeremy Alexis Magruder, University of Florida; Chanel Renee Easley, Techbridge; Yael-Alexandra Jackie Monereau, University of Tampa; Makita R. Phillips; Arielle M. Benjamin

Tagged Topics

Diversity

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

 issues, through conversation, sharing, and inquiry [10].   The participants in this study acted as co­researchers who thoughtfully reflected on their own experiences in navigating and completing at least one STEM degree and working in STEM related areas. There are many approaches to using narrative in research, but a personal narrative, can also be considered autoethnography. Narrative in research is generally focused on producing some version of text, whether spoken or written, to represent the sole data source for another party to evaluate and assess the  meaning. Autoethnography, however, prompts the narrator to do the work of connecting their own story to theory, in order to explain a larger social reality. In this study, the narrative

Conference Session

Writing and Communication I

Collection

2016 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Stephanie Pulford, Auburn University

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

choices; so when we see students whoare not motivated to learn, a reasonable first hypothesis is that their task value motivation is low.This is a hypothesis shared by much of the engineering community. A very commonpresumption regarding students’ low learning motivation is that they simply don’t know thatengineers have use for writing skills, that “real” engineers write; and if only they did, surely theywould apply themselves in their writing classes. We can see some fleeting evidence of this kindof unmotivated student in qualitative data. For example, in case studies and interviewsengineering students have reported that they don’t see writing as important 1, or they viewwriting as incidental to the real work of engineering, reflecting cultural

Conference Session

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society (LEES) Poster Session

Collection

2013 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Craig J. Gunn, Michigan State University

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

before and internally; where to placecommas; the use of the semi-colon; punctuation with lists; and where does the punctuation go infigures and tables. A few grammar rules presented in the context of technical documentation to anengineering course at the beginning of each semester or quarter will, in most cases, eliminate manyof these mistakes.A third concern among readers of student text is the flat dull quality that comes from much of thetext that is produced by students. This quality reflects a lack of flow in the wording, a conditionsimilar to reading a list that indicates no apparent connection among the various parts of the list.This lack of connection makes a reader quickly begin to wander, sometimes becoming lost inpersonal thoughts far

Conference Session

Teaching Communication I

Collection

2014 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Ronald S Harichandran, University of New Haven; David J Adams, Technical Communications Consultant; Michael A. Collura, University of New Haven; Nadiye O. Erdil, University of New Haven; W. David Harding, University of New Haven; Jean Nocito-Gobel, University of New Haven; Amy Thompson, University of New Haven

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

required when addressing the reader’s questions/concerns in a technical memocompared with a research paper. The PITCH outcomes (see Table 1) addressed in this course are1a, 2b, 2c and 2d. Feedback from the initial two non-graded PITCH assignments in fall 2013 was used todevelop a general advice table, outlining common mistakes made by students. Examples areprovided to illustrate these mistakes and how to correct them. The usefulness of the advice tableis limited if it does not reflect the mistakes made by the students taking the course. Thus, it isexpected that the table will change and expand with subsequent offerings of the course. Somefaculty voiced concern that students may not read a multipage table. Thus, in addition, a one-page advice

Conference Session

Why Industry Says that our Engineering Students Cannot Write

Collection

2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Jeffrey A. Donnell, Georgia Institute of Technology; Betsy M. Aller, Western Michigan University; Michael Alley, Pennsylvania State University, University Park; April A. Kedrowicz, University of Utah

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society, Mechanical Engineering

. Then, in broader consideration of WI programs, we consider questions of control andauthority that are latent in any WAC collaboration.Table 1 provides a sampling of the structure of engineering communication programs across thecountry. Not shown in Table 1 is the typical freshman English course, which all students take.Also not reflected are the nuances on technical communication courses and writing intensivecourses that engineering students take.EC 2000 and the Development of WI and General Skills Programs. Although we areprimarily interested in communication instruction, it is important to remember that ABET’sevaluation criteria have come to embrace a number of non-technical skills since EC2000 wasintroduced. Siller’s description of Colorado