Conference Session

Student Learning and Teamwork

Collection

2012 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Jenifer M. Shannon, Pennsylvania State University, Berks; Rungun Nathan, Pennsylvania State University, Berks

Tagged Divisions

Engineering Technology

one of the key attributes future engineers need in order to becompetitive in the global market according to the National Academy of Engineers1. Yet surveysfrom industry employers often indicate that the communication skills of recent engineeringgraduates are unsatisfactory2. This paper describes a strategy to improve student writtencommunication skills and student engagement with the subject matter by developing the use ofcritical thinking skills during the writing process. The modified pedagogy discussed in thispaper provided students with detailed guidance and clear expectations for each writingassignment. A combination of peer review and instructor comments was used as a means ofproviding feedback for students to incorporate lessons

Conference Session

Multidisciplinary Endeavors: Engineering and Liberal Arts

Collection

2019 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Sarah Summers, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology; Anique Julienne Olivier-Mason, Brandeis University; Marina Dang, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Diana M. Chien, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Tagged Topics

Diversity

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society, Multidisciplinary Engineering

institutional contexts. In this paper, we analyze the adaptation of one such intervention,the Communication Lab (Comm Lab), a peer-to-peer coaching resource for writing, presenting,and other forms of technical communication [4]. By analyzing three institutions’ iterations of aComm Lab, we argue that a balance between core pedagogical strategies and attention to clientneeds makes the Comm Lab model both identifiable across institutions and flexible enough toadapt to new institutional contexts. For example, the client-based model relies on using peerswith disciplinary expertise to ensure quality feedback. However, the definitions of “peer” and“disciplinary expertise” become more multidisciplinary across institutions according to thestudent population

Collection

2020 First-Year Engineering Experience

Authors

Debjani Sarkar, College of Engineering, Michigan State University

Tagged Topics

Diversity

different opportunities, connect with resources, and bond,socialize, and network with their peers and the greater engineering community.A variety of novel techniques can be implemented to teach and assess communication skillsthrough the delivery of elevator pitches. Students can pitch with dorm mates, peers, and outsidersin their dorms, cafeterias, on elevators, and corridors, and be assessed by peers who can beprovided with a rubric of presentation expectations. Peer review can be in the form of a report oran executive summary, which is another innovative method of enhancing writing skills. They canface mock interviews in an active learning environment in class, with peers enacting as hiringmanagers, company executives, supervisors, and

Conference Session

Tips and Tricks for Assessing Student Performance

Collection

2017 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Edward F. Gehringer, North Carolina State University

Tagged Divisions

New Engineering Educators

group grade to produce a final grade. Note that allof these approaches assume that peer assement is also performed. In principle, staffassessment could be substituted for peer assessment, but (1) this would consume muchmore staff time, and (2) students would miss out on the metacognitive benefits ofevaluating others’ work. It is true, however, that efficiently processing peer assessmentsrequires significant IT support (see Babik et al. [27] for a discussion of the options).Table 1 shows how the four approaches compare. CPR (and the similar training programused by Coursera) contrasts with the other three approaches because (i) it is used toassess artifacts (writing, reporting, etc.) rather than student contributions to a team, andbecause it

Conference Session

First-Year Programs Division (FYP) - Technical Session 2: Program Design

Collection

2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Emily M Wortman-Wunder; Miriam Howland Cummings Ph.D., University of Colorado Denver; Maryam Darbeheshti, University of Colorado Denver

Tagged Divisions

First-Year Programs Division (FYP)

Rhetorical analysis purposeful writing comparing a popular comparing an engineering source with a document with a more scholarly source literary or personal form Revision and writing process  Drafting; peer critique Every paper requires multiple  Portfolio drafts; structured “peer review” style feedback from classmates. Argument & analysis  Responsible advocacy Students create documents in

Conference Session

Civil Engineering Division - Huh? What Did You Say? What Does That Mean?

Collection

2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Karin Becker, United States Air Force Academy; Timothy Frank, United States Air Force Academy; Joel Sloan, United States Air Force Academy

Technical Communication Block Lesson 1 What is Technical Communication: Guidelines, Expectations & Examples Lesson 2 Ethics & Roles of Technical Communicators Lesson 3 Communicating Visually & Becoming User-Centered Lesson 4 Peer Review of Students Drafts of Writing Assignment 1In addition to the technical communication block of lessons, the concept of the four pillars wasintegrated throughout the course as each writing assignment designated a different intendedaudience and students had to tailor their content, language, and design appropriately. Instructorsassessed each writing assignment using the same rubric which evaluated students’ appeals toaccessibility, user-centeredness, accuracy, and

Conference Session

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society Division Technical Session 9

Collection

2019 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Cheryl Q. Li, University of New Haven; Judy Randi, University of New Haven; Jenna Pack Sheffield, University of New Haven

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

traits, theCollege’s writing instructor (second author) teaches a first-year online introductory course intechnical writing, Short Engineering Reports (SER). In SER, in addition to learning aboutstylistic traits that distinguish technical writing from other styles, students learn to plan, writeand revise technical memoranda. Students are expected to apply this knowledge and skills, whenthey compose the two memoranda assigned in the co-requisite engineering course, Methods ofEngineering Analysis (MEA). After the students submit the first memo to their engineeringinstructors, the SER instructor provides students feedback and assigns revision tasks. Studentsalso learn to self and peer review their memos, using an analytic “feedback” rubric that

Conference Session

Adaptive and Supportive Learning Environments

Collection

2012 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Eric C. Huang, Manhattan College

Tagged Divisions

Chemical Engineering, Minorities in Engineering

25.499.2majors.15 Peer-mentored individuals “have demonstrated improvements in connectedness toschool and peers.”16 The purpose of this paper is to describe whether a similar effect on socialintegration can be observed, specifically, for students in different graduating classes of the sameengineering discipline.MethodSophomore students entering the chemical engineering discipline were given the opportunity toparticipate in a peer mentoring program organized and monitored by the faculty. Mentors weresenior students in the same discipline who qualified for the respective honor society. At the timeof solicitation, sophomores were informed verbally and in writing that the program wouldrequire meetings with their mentor on a monthly basis. Fourteen sophomore

Collection

2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Lisa Lebduska; David DiBiasio

improve student interestand clarify assignment objectives6. A much broader, more programmatic approach to WAC hasbeen undertaken by the Materials Science and Engineering Department at Virginia PolytechnicInstitute, which integrated writing and speaking into eight core courses that students take over athree-year period. The courses in this sequence used a combination of formal and informal(“interpersonal”) communication assignments, peer writing consultants, and supplementalwriting workshops. Their efforts seem to have contributed to the establishment of a requiredzero-credit class for majors that requires students to create a writing portfolio containing theirbest work in a variety of modes from their required classes7.Objectives of the WPI

Conference Session

Integrating Experiential Learning into the Curriculum

Collection

2018 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Félix Langevin Harnois, École de Technologie Supérieure; Jerome Harrison, École de Technologie Supérieure; Prasun Lala, École de Technologie Supérieure; Ghizlane El Boussaidi, École de Technologie Supérieure; Christian Desrosiers, École de Technologie Supérieure; Catherine Laporte, École de Technologie Supérieure

Tagged Divisions

Cooperative and Experiential Education

Paper ID #22176Promoting Good Scientific Communication Habits by Leveraging the Com-munity of Practice within a Single Research Group ´Mr. F´elix Langevin Harnois, Ecole de Technologie Sup´erieure ´ Librarian at Ecole de technologie sup´erieure, an engineering school in Montreal, he works on developing information literacy skills for undergraduate and graduate doctoral students. He also works, in collabora- tion with 3 professors and a researcher, on a service that uses peer-support to help graduate students who have to write a thesis, a journal article or who want to develop

Conference Session

NSF Grantees Poster Session

Collection

2017 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Matthew A. Verleger Ph.D. (He/His/Him), Embry-Riddle Aeronautical Univ., Daytona Beach

Tagged Topics

NSF Grantees Poster Session

quickly. A large portion of the readability is based on sentence structure, grammar, and clear writing; all attributes that are difficult to judge quickly. This is further exemplified by the fact that neither of the reviewers are native English speakers. • For nearly all the evaluations, the computer algorithmic approach was still superior to human evaluation. The underlying problem with computer evaluation was the need for detailed training data.Conclusions and Next StepsWhile the results are not surprising, they do demonstrate why random assignment is so popularin peer review. Attempts to find a meaningful, resource conscious approach to quicklyclassifying student work for peer review have found the problem to be

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Peter J. Shull

the bottom line being a resulting lower grade. (This is in spite of discussions during the course on grading particulars and responsibility to review prior reports and work of others.)IV. Establish an Element of Peer Pressure Through Group Discussion of Graded WorkAmong others, the goals of the group writing project consisted of: • Improving writing skills through reviewing written material prepared by other students as they selected the positive and negative aspects of each other’s writing style. • Improving report quality through “peer pressure” of realizing that another student is reviewing your work. • Provide an opportunity for other students to review material for errors in

Conference Session

Technological and Engineering Literacy/Philosophy of Engineering Division Technical Session 3

Collection

2018 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Alyson Grace Eggleston, The Citadel; Robert J. Rabb P.E., The Citadel

Tagged Divisions

Technological and Engineering Literacy/Philosophy of Engineering

theirdesign decisions and addressing each area, students had to brief their project to the entire class.Even though the other students had the same baseline knowledge as they did on the technicalmaterial, they had no previous knowledge of the application. The team briefing the class had tobe clear, succinct, and communicate their design and application to fellow engineers who had theopportunity to ask questions. The instructor graded them on their presentation, and a smallnumber of their peers provided written comments back on their presentation skills. In addition tothese demonstrations, teams submitted a lab report for grade. Instructors for the course havenoted the overall improvement in writing quality and consistency over the last two years

Conference Session

Information and Network Security

Collection

2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Edward F. Gehringer, North Carolina State University

Tagged Divisions

Computing & Information Technology

they are writing on. It gives them experience inorganizing their thoughts for their peers, which in itself can lead to gains in writing ability[3]. Writing for peers differs from writing for an “expert” audience as students normally do,because peers cannot be expected to understand the material unless it is well explained. Itteaches students to “find truth” on the Web, by making inferences based on reading multiplesources and evaluating their respective claims.While students may not immediately appreciate the pedagogical benefits of wiki textbooks,they do understand their price advantage. The idea of a free textbook has instant appeal. Ifstudents are asked to pay for a textbook, then they should reap some benefit from it

Conference Session

Architectural Engineering Education I

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Sze-wai Chan; Ming-yin Chan

surveyor of abuilding team. It is hoped that they could learn from the process. Each group was required tosubmit a set of documents prepared by the group at the end of the academic year forassessment. The documents included a written report, meeting minutes, diary and drawings.An oral presentation was assessed by a group of tutors. The project carried a highly weightedfactor for their final year curriculum and lasted for an academic year. The assessmentcomponents include writing skills, operational skills, presentation skill, and professionalcompetence. The difficulty of assessment is not only quantity of work, but also quality ofwork. Literature review has suggested a number of approaches. Common methods areweighting factor, pool of marks, peer

Collection

2021 ASEE Midwest Section Conference

Authors

Justin M. Hutchison; Edward Peltier

thebeginning of the course and expressed a desire to have spent more time selecting a better topic.Second, blind student peer review was incorporated into the discussion project, and again, selectstudents were averse to this type of feedback."Personally, I found the discussion paper to be useful, but I wish I would have picked a bettertopic/paper to write off of. The topic I used was covered in one of the last weeks of class and aftercovering that content, what I had been reading and writing about made so much more sense! Maybea little more discussion about what makes a good paper would be helpful. Even if you decide [on]one topic, picking the actual paper you want to cover is so hard! I think I ended up finding andskimming 20 or 30 papers before

Conference Session

Emerging Trends in Engineering Education Poster Session

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Constance Kampf; Dave Kmiec

– Why is it a problem? – Why should it be solved now? – Why is it compelling (cost/benefit)? • Link to your solution – How will your solution contribute to solving the problem? – How will people be affected by the outcomes of your solution?In the context of a memo, these components are rather granular—sentence and paragraph level.Beyond providing structural and informative points of consideration for students in theproduction of documents, the problem-solution memo scheme gives the writing consultant avocabulary for discussing the components of the students’ memos during the review and revisephase and gives students a vocabulary for discussion during cooperative writing and peer

Conference Session

Mentoring Graduate Students for Success

Collection

2002 Annual Conference

Authors

Patricia Stubblefield; Elisabeth Alford

Engineering"Similarities Between Writing a Thesis/Dissertation and Writing Major Research Proposals andReports" (10 minutes) Speaker: Professor of Electrical Engineering"The Ethical Dimensions of Writing and Talking About Research" (10 minutes) Speaker: Coordinator of the Engineering Ethics Program"Incubating Ideas" Discussion and exercise led by PCC staff (15 minutes)"Coherence in Writing" (15 minutes) Discussion and exercise led by PCC staff"Managing and Surviving the Dissertation Process" (30 minutes) Discipline-specific, peer-led discussionTwo engineering faculty members participated in the workshop. A professor of electricalengineering discussed the similarities between writing the dissertation and writing

Conference Session

Innovation in the Civil Engineering Classroom

Collection

2009 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Matthew Roberts, University of Wisconsin, Platteville

Tagged Divisions

Civil Engineering

expected, a large portion (40%) of the total project grade is based on the draft. Aguideline entitled “Effective Engineering Writing,” which was adapted from Parker,(8) isgiven to the students (and included as Appendix E).The students turn in one copy of the draft report for the instructor, with all group mem-bers identified. Each group also turns in additional anonymous copies with no identifica-tion of group members. These anonymous copies are randomly distributed to othermembers of the class who have one week to perform a peer evaluation of the draft. Moredetails on the peer evaluation are given in the “Peer Assessment” section below. Thegrade on the final draft is determined using the student peer assessments and a gradingrubric used by the

Collection

2005 GSW

Authors

Ross Kastor; Robert Askew; Richard Bannerot; Paul Ruchhoeft; Elena Poltavtchenko; Colley Hodges; Chad Wilson; Cari-Sue Wilmot

, American Society for Engineering Education“Writing Consultants,” or peer writing coaches, who provide one-on-one tutoring. TheseWriting Consultants are full-time students, primarily undergraduates, who havedemonstrated high aptitude in writing and leadership skills. In response to increasingfaculty interest in discipline-specific writing, the Writing Center created a Writing In theDisciplines (WID) program in Fall 2002. Staff in the WID program work with instructorsto intervene in courses across the campus in which communications skills are stressed.The rationale for the intervention is that general composition courses cannot adequatelyprepare students for discipline-specific writing. (More information on the UH WritingCenter and its WID Program

Conference Session

Experiences of Underrepresented Students in Engineering

Collection

2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access

Authors

Nayda G. Santiago, University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez Campus; Manuel A. Jimenez, University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez Campus; Luisa Guillemard, University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez Campus

Tagged Topics

Diversity

Tagged Divisions

Educational Research and Methods

possible scenarios,practicing cooperative learning elements and using vocabulary according to context. The role ofthe PLTL coordinator is to observe the group interaction while allowing students to generatetheir own knowledge on how to teach the concepts and will intervene only when needed.After each training session, peer leaders were asked to write a two-page reflection on whatworked and did not work in their groups, in planned activities, and logistics. There was no timelimit for the reflection. According to Mezirow [15], reflective thinking is considered a learningtool that promotes higher thinking skills and deep learning among adults. Prompt questions werethe following: 1) How was the process to create the session? What worked and what did

Conference Session

ERM Potpourri

Collection

2006 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Katie Sullivan, University of Utah; April Kedrowicz, University of Utah

Tagged Divisions

Educational Research and Methods

instruction in this course was similar to thespeaking instruction, although the averages were slightly lower (see table 6).Item Mean ModeThe writing instructor’s lecture and peer review facilitation effectively 3.00 3.00assisted me in understanding how to organize a proposal.The writing instructor’s lecture and peer review facilitation effectively 2.89 3.00assisted me in understanding how to write a proposal.The writing instructor’s feedback on my review draft was helpful. 2.97 3.00I applied feedback to subsequent writing assignments. 3.40 3.00The writing instructor encouraged me to develop my writing

Conference Session

ASEE Multimedia Session

Collection

2002 Annual Conference

Authors

Jim Richardson

the University of West Virginia has anoutstanding peer review of student learning—the Majors. 2 “The Majors are design projects thestudents must complete individually and defend in front of at least two faculty members.” TheMajors, which date back to the 1970s, incur significant faculty time, however. Other examplesof peer review of student work include: faculty-colleague check sheet evaluations of projectreports3, reviews of student portfolios and course folders of capstone design work3, annualevaluation of portfolios of student writing assignments by faculty advisors 4, and before- Page 7.106.1graduation evaluation of writing assignment

Conference Session

ETAC/ABET RELATED OUTCOME BASED ISSUES

Collection

2013 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Robert Weissbach P.E., Pennsylvania State University, Erie; Ruth Camille Pflueger, Pennsylvania State University in Erie, the Behrend College

Tagged Divisions

Engineering Technology

process, butoftentimes engineering technology students have few opportunities to develop their skills in thisarea as they matriculate through their chosen degree program. Many programs require only oneor two writing courses outside of the major. In addition, courses that require communication inthe form of laboratory reports often provide minimal feedback regarding appropriate writingstyle, the effective support of results with analysis, and maintaining efficiency in writing.In this paper, a new approach is presented that unburdens some of the responsibility from theinstructor to peer tutors outside of the engineering technology major who are skilled writers.Although this effort has been ongoing, with engineering technology students required to

Conference Session

Mentoring Graduate Students for Success

Collection

2002 Annual Conference

Authors

Patricia LaCourse; Barrett Rock

, Dubuque, Iowa:Kendall/Hunt Publishing, 1988.22. Olds, B. M., "Four Effective Writing Strategies for Engineering Classes. III. Peer Editing," Journal ofEngineering Education, vol. 88, no. 1, 1999, pp. 53-57. Page 7.38.6 Proceedings of the 2002 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright Ó 2002, American Society for Engineering EducationPAT LACOURSE is the Engineering and Science Librarian at Scholes Library, New York State College ofCeramics, Alfred University. Besides developing the science and engineering collection and providing referencesupport, LaCourse is

Conference Session

Military and Veterans Division Technical Session 2: Veteran Identity & Inclusion

Collection

2018 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Alyson Grace Eggleston, The Citadel; Robert J. Rabb P.E., The Citadel

Tagged Divisions

Military and Veterans

understanding, and make clear toveterans and their classroom peers the relevance of military writing for all kinds of writing, evenconventional academic prose [9].Instructors can and should address military service in a way that can be comfortable andgenerative through knowledge of military writing experiences. Hadlock notes that despite theirstated discomfort in a writing classroom, veteran students often have previous training in writingconcepts, but they can also fail to connect previous training with the kind of assignments foundin college writing classes [9]. Veteran students need to know how the elements taught in acomposition class are expansions of ideas to which they have already had exposure. TWCinstructors with a military background may be

Collection

1996 Annual Conference

Authors

Martha Ostheimer; Hal Tharp

, peer-evaluation, and group evaluation of problemsolving strategies, as well as written and oral communication skills. The course is built around uniqueteam-projects that each group creates. The course also includes significant writing-to-learn activities thatencourage students to reflect on and develop an awareness of their problem solving processes andcommunication skills. The students also work in teams, and in pairs, to evaluate the process of solvingproblems. Their written and oral presentations are also self-evaluated and peer-evaluated. This emphasison students becoming more self-aware of the strengths and weaknesses of their problem solving abilities,and on students becoming capable of evaluating the effectiveness of their communication

Conference Session

Emerging Computing and Information Technologies II

Collection

2015 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Edward F. Gehringer, North Carolina State University

Tagged Divisions

Computing & Information Technology

isasked to fill out a rubric that asks certain questions about the student author’s work. Forsummative review, the reviewer is asked to rate the work numerically based on a set ofcriteria (organization, clarity, etc.).Peer review has been widely used in higher education since the 1970s, and onlinesystems have been available for over 20 years. The largest ongoing project in this area isthe NSF-funded Calibrated Peer Review (CPR) project [11], which has been used bymore than a quarter-million students. While the pedagogical benefits of peer review arewell established, students must be trained in how to write an effective review. CPR doesthis by having students review three artifacts supplied by the instructor: one is a modelartifact, and the other

Conference Session

Graduate Studies Division (GSD) Technical Session 3: Mentorship and Communication in Engineering Graduate Programs

Collection

2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Elizabeth Fife, University of Southern California

Tagged Divisions

Graduate Studies Division (GSD)

takes place to build student’s self-appraisal skills.Many video examples are used in class to show presenting styles, use of different structures,opening and closing a talk, gesturing, tone and adapting information to different audiences.Students analyze the speeches of Hans Rosling, Max Tegmark, Barack Obama and other globallyknown speakers and scientists, as well as presentations from their peers. Focused observation ofspeakers helps students define their own presentation style and also supports in-class exercisesthat break down the many elements of a presentation. Targeting single elements such astransitions or fielding questions allows students to build capacity through experimentation. Aswith the writing course, Ph.D. students greatly

Collection

2024 South East Section Meeting

Authors

John W. Brocato, University of Georgia

Tagged Topics

Diversity

continues the conversation begun in the first meeting and introduces the course’smajor writing assignment, the Individual Professional Development Plan (IPDP). Thisassignment requires students to craft a specific plan for their college careers and beyond, a planthat in its final form may be a written paper, a narrated presentation (PowerPoint, etc.), or amultimedia work of some sort. Students also submit multiple drafts and participate in a guidedpeer review of each other’s work. The third engineering-communication class meeting reviewsprevious strategies and guidelines along with some of the common issues arising out of the firstdrafts and peer reviews, after which students have one more week before submitting their finaldrafts. Although the