Can Writing Assignments Help Foster Engineers Who Will Thrive in a Globalized World? Comparing Students' Written English Levels and Overall Performance in Humanities Modules in Engineering Curricula

Hatsuko Yoshikubo; Gabriele Trovato; Ahmet Cetinkaya

Download Paper | Permalink

Conference: 2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
Location: Portland, Oregon
Publication Date: June 23, 2024
Start Date: June 23, 2024
End Date: July 12, 2024
Conference Session: Multidisciplinary Engineering Division (MULTI) Technical Session 2
Tagged Division: Multidisciplinary Engineering Division (MULTI)
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/48441

Request a correction

Paper Authors

biography

Hatsuko Yoshikubo Ph.D. Shibaura Institute of Technology

visit author page

Dr. Hatsuko Yoshikubo obtained Ph. D in English Literature from Chiba University in Japan in 2002. She is currently a Professor in the Innovative Global Program, a research-based full English degree engineering program at the College of Engineering at Shibaura Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan. She is a Principal Investigator of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Research Grants 24K06133 and the Shibaura Institute of Technology Grants for Educational Reform and Research Activity in the AY2024. Her current main research interests are: 1) how including humanities courses in an engineering education curriculum can help students to gain flexibility, and an appreciation of equity, and a greater richness of ideas; and 2) systematic issues impacting the effectiveness of engineering education, specifically in the context of project-based learnings for the engineering education. Below are her recent presentations at international conferences: ASEE 2023, WERA 2023, 2022, 2019, APAIE 2023, 2022, IIAI DSIR 2021, 2020. She obtained the Multidisciplinary Engineering Division’s Best Diversity Paper Award in ASEE 2023 and the Outstanding Paper Award in DSIR 2021.

visit author page

biography

Gabriele Trovato Ph.D. Shibaura Institute of Technology

visit author page

Gabriele Trovato is Associate Professor in Shibaura Institute of Technology and Visiting Researcher in Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan.
As founder and head of LAB 22, Gabriele Trovato is also Principal Investigator in the EU-Japan Horizon 2020 project e-ViTA.
He received his M.S. degree in Computer Engineering from the University of Pisa, Italy, and Ph.D. degree in Biorobotics in Waseda University. Within the relations between the two countries, Gabriele Trovato has been in the organising committee of Italy-Japan Workshops since 2011, and has been appointed "Ambassador of Livorno in the world" by the Municipality of Livorno, Italy.
He has been Visiting Researcher in Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (Germany), University of Sao Paulo (Brazil), PUCP (Peru) and Imperial College London (UK) among others.
Gabriele Trovato has worked in the video game industry, being involved in the development of the world-wide notorious game series "Sid Meier's Civilization" and having created popular innovative mods for the game.
His main research interests are interdisciplinary and include Human-Robot Interaction, with focus on culture and religion related aspects, artificial emotions in humanoids, robot aesthetics, and procedural content generation.
Gabriele Trovato's latest creations, such as SanTO robots, are a combination of engineering, AI, art and humanities, and raised interest among the worldwide press, including the Wall Street Journal and the BBC.

visit author page

biography

Ahmet Cetinkaya Ph.D. Shibaura Institute of Technology

visit author page

Ahmet Cetinkaya received two B.Eng. degrees in control engineering and computer engineering from Istanbul Technical University, Istanbul, Turkey, both in 2007, and M.Eng. and Ph.D. degrees in informatics from the Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan, in 2011 and 2014, respectively. He held Postdoctoral Research positions in Tokyo Institute of Technology (2014--2019) and Project Assistant and Project Associate Professorship positions at the National Institute of Informatics, Tokyo (2019--2022). He is currently an Associate Professor at Shibaura Institute of Technology, Tokyo, and a Visiting Associate Professor at National Institute of Informatics. His research interests include hybrid and stochastic dynamical systems, networked control, cyber security of control systems, automated driving, as well as probability theory and its applications in physics, learning, and control.

visit author page

Download Paper | Permalink

Abstract

Background This paper assesses students’ English-language writing levels by analysing their written work in a ‘history of Japan’ module, a humanities component in an engineering program at the study authors’ university. We investigate connections between students' written English levels and their overall academic performance as embodied by exam grades. We explore how future iterations of the course might be enhanced, in order to increase its effectiveness as a vehicle for developing students' English writing abilities, creativity, and 'global mindset'. The student body for this module, 'Science and Religion in Japan', consists entirely of international students and the course is taught exclusively in English. To advance participants’ logical reasoning capabilities, they are required to write summary-and-response papers as their one their key weekly assignments. With a diverse cohort of students from countries with varying baseline levels of English proficiency, the authors have observed over several years that while most students can articulate their thoughts effectively in verbal discussions, their writing clarity varies substantially. Naturally, we want all international students to gain as much knowledge as they can from the course, without this being completely contingent on their pre-existing level of English. We therefore continuously look for ways to optimise all aspects of the course format - especially teaching materials and assessment methods - in order to match student needs as closely as possible, ensuring that the program teaches Japanese history and intercultural skills effectively to students no matter what their background. To this end, the study also investigates relationships between the CEFR-J levels displayed in students' writing assignments for individual topics, and those seen in the corresponding lecture materials. Does the level of English produced by the student closely 'mirror' that of the study material, which could indicate patch writing? This part of the research provides insights into how course materials and instructions can be better designed to prevent patch writing, and to instead encourage students to develop their own writing skills to the greatest extent possible.

Methodology To evaluate students’ written English levels, we utilised the ‘CVLA (v2.0)’ tool to assess students’ written English levels, and then compared the results with their course grades. CVLA stands for ‘Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR)-based Vocabulary Level Analyzer.’

Results Using the CVLA, two CEFR-J scores for each of the 22 students taking the course were computed. The first was based on their written output in weeks 1-3 of the course, and the second was based on their output in the concluding weeks 11-13. On the CEFR-J scale, ‘Pre-A1’ is the lowest and ‘C2’ the highest score attainable. To make quantitative analysis more user-friendly, CEFR-J scores can also be expressed as numbers between 0.5 and 6.0. When we conducted quantitative analysis on the data from the first three weeks of our course, the mean average of students’ CEFR-J levels was 4.955 (B2.2-C1), whereas for the last three weeks the mean was 5.432 (C1-C2); this difference in average scores was shown to be statistically significant when the appropriate significance tests were applied.

Citation
Format

Yoshikubo, H., & Trovato, G., & Cetinkaya, A. (2024, June), Can Writing Assignments Help Foster Engineers Who Will Thrive in a Globalized World? Comparing Students' Written English Levels and Overall Performance in Humanities Modules in Engineering Curricula Paper presented at 2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Portland, Oregon. https://peer.asee.org/48441

TY - CPAPER
AB - Background
This paper assesses students’ English-language writing levels by analysing their written work in a ‘history of Japan’ module, a humanities component in an engineering program at the study authors’ university. We investigate connections between students&#39; written English levels and their overall academic performance as embodied by exam grades. We explore how future iterations of the course might be enhanced, in order to increase its effectiveness as a vehicle for developing students&#39; English writing abilities, creativity, and &#39;global mindset&#39;. The student body for this module, &#39;Science and Religion in Japan&#39;, consists entirely of international students and the course is taught exclusively in English. To advance participants’ logical reasoning capabilities, they are required to write summary-and-response papers as their one their key weekly assignments. With a diverse cohort of students from countries with varying baseline levels of English proficiency, the authors have observed over several years that while most students can articulate their thoughts effectively in verbal discussions, their writing clarity varies substantially. Naturally, we want all international students to gain as much knowledge as they can from the course, without this being completely contingent on their pre-existing level of English. We therefore continuously look for ways to optimise all aspects of the course format - especially teaching materials and assessment methods - in order to match student needs as closely as possible, ensuring that the program teaches Japanese history and intercultural skills effectively to students no matter what their background. To this end, the study also investigates relationships between the CEFR-J levels displayed in students&#39; writing assignments for individual topics, and those seen in the corresponding lecture materials. Does the level of English produced by the student closely &#39;mirror&#39; that of the study material, which could indicate patch writing? This part of the research provides insights into how course materials and instructions can be better designed to prevent patch writing, and to instead encourage students to develop their own writing skills to the greatest extent possible.

Methodology
To evaluate students’ written English levels, we utilised the ‘CVLA (v2.0)’ tool to assess students’ written English levels, and then compared the results with their course grades. CVLA stands for ‘Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR)-based Vocabulary Level Analyzer.’

Results
Using the CVLA, two CEFR-J scores for each of the 22 students taking the course were computed. The first was based on their written output in weeks 1-3 of the course, and the second was based on their output in the concluding weeks 11-13. On the CEFR-J scale, ‘Pre-A1’ is the lowest and ‘C2’ the highest score attainable. To make quantitative analysis more user-friendly, CEFR-J scores can also be expressed as numbers between 0.5 and 6.0. When we conducted quantitative analysis on the data from the first three weeks of our course, the mean average of students’ CEFR-J levels was 4.955 (B2.2-C1), whereas for the last three weeks the mean was 5.432 (C1-C2); this difference in average scores was shown to be statistically significant when the appropriate significance tests were applied.

AU - Hatsuko Yoshikubo Ph.D.
AU - Gabriele Trovato Ph.D.
AU - Ahmet Cetinkaya Ph.D.
CY - Portland, Oregon
DA - 2024/06/23
PB - ASEE Conferences
TI - Can Writing Assignments Help Foster Engineers Who Will Thrive in a Globalized World? Comparing Students' Written English Levels and Overall Performance in Humanities Modules in Engineering Curricula
UR - https://peer.asee.org/48441
ER -