Improving Technical Writing Skills Through Lab Reports

Ilan Gravé

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Conference: 2019 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
Location: Tampa, Florida
Publication Date: June 15, 2019
Start Date: June 15, 2019
End Date: June 19, 2019
Conference Session: Experimentation and Laboratory-Oriented Studies Division Technical Session 5
Tagged Division: Experimentation and Laboratory-Oriented Studies
Page Count: 12
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--32951
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/32951
Download Count: 1341

Paper Authors

biography

Ilan Gravé Elizabethtown College

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Ilan Gravé received B.Sc. in Physics and Electrical Engineering and M.Sc. in Physics from Tel-Aviv University in Israel, and a PhD in Applied Physics from Caltech, in Pasadena, California (1993). In the past he has lead high-tech R&D avionics projects at the Israeli Aircraft Industries; has been a senior researcher and adviser at the Fondazione Ugo Bordoni, in the Ministry of Post and Communications in Rome, Italy; and has been on the faculty of the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh. He is currently an Associate Professor of Physics and Engineering at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania. He has on his record numerous publications in a number of fields in Applied Physics and Engineering, including superconductivity, semiconductor quantum devices, nonlinear optics, semiconductor lasers, infrared detectors and signal processing of medical signals.

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Abstract

In the last few decades, there has been an effort to address how to complement the teaching of scientific and technical skills to scientist/engineers with other attributes needed for a successful career and a full integration within diverse work environments – among them, prominently, writing and presentation skills. A parallel curriculum addressing these non-scientific/technical skills usually is a strong contributor towards these goals; another tool, generally more directly controlled by science/engineering faculty is using laboratory courses to emphasize writing components and/or presentation skills. Lab reports could be a very good tool to sharpen wring skill or, more extensively, the skills needed to produce a coherent, well thought, well-written scientific paper or technical report, as long as appropriate emphasis and weight in grading is given. At our institution, we have an engineering department embedded in a liberal art general education setting. Engineering students are required to take a wide core curriculum to integrate their scientific and technical education in engineering. Still, to obtain best results and comply with the department’s (and ABET’s) program outcomes, we found that we strongly benefit from addressing the students’ reports during their first laboratory courses as tools to achieve these goals - and progressively improve their writing and presentation skills. In this paper, we present the different formats and requirements of report writing in a sequence of four scientific/technical labs, The Physics I, Physics II, Circuit Analysis and Control Theory Labs. We will show how the different requirements have been set in order to enhance different aspects of report writing with different emphases, and we will attempt to describe – in some cases qualitatively and in other quantitatively – the corresponding progress of our engineering students with respect to scientific and technical report writing - from their incoming first year to their graduating year. Observing students’ work from their first lab reports up to their latest reports and presentations in upper level courses and senior projects, we, the instructors, are in most cases witnessing a dramatic improvement in their writing and expression skills. While these improvements are due to a large variety of factors – including natural maturity, wide education from all courses, hands-on activities, learning from peers and from teamwork and more – we believe that the emphases put on report writing skills and developed through specially-set requirements and emphases in the first few scientific/technical labs do play an important role in the students’ progression to enhanced and improved skills.

Citation
Format

Gravé, I. (2019, June), Improving Technical Writing Skills Through Lab Reports Paper presented at 2019 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition , Tampa, Florida. 10.18260/1-2--32951

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - In the last few decades, there has been an effort to address how to complement the teaching of scientific and technical skills to scientist/engineers with other attributes needed for a successful career and a full integration within diverse work environments  – among them, prominently, writing and presentation skills. A parallel curriculum addressing these non-scientific/technical skills usually is a strong contributor towards these goals; another tool, generally more directly controlled by science/engineering faculty is using laboratory courses to emphasize writing components and/or presentation skills. Lab reports could be a very good tool to sharpen wring skill or, more extensively, the skills needed to produce a coherent, well thought, well-written scientific paper or technical report, as long as appropriate emphasis and weight in grading is given.  At our institution, we have an engineering department embedded in a liberal art general education setting. Engineering students are required to take a wide core curriculum to integrate their scientific and technical education in engineering. Still, to obtain best results and comply with the department’s (and ABET’s) program outcomes, we found that we strongly benefit from addressing the students’ reports during their first laboratory courses as tools to achieve these goals - and progressively improve their writing and presentation skills.
In this paper, we present the different formats and requirements of report writing in a sequence of four scientific/technical labs, The Physics I, Physics II, Circuit Analysis and Control Theory Labs. We will show how the different requirements have been set in order to enhance different aspects of report writing with different emphases, and we will attempt to describe – in some cases qualitatively and in other quantitatively – the corresponding progress of our engineering students with respect to scientific and technical report writing - from their incoming first year to their graduating year. 
Observing students’ work from their first lab reports up to their latest reports and presentations in upper level courses and senior projects, we, the instructors, are in most cases witnessing a dramatic improvement in their writing and expression skills. While these improvements are due to a large variety of factors – including natural maturity, wide education from all courses, hands-on activities, learning from peers and from teamwork and more – we believe that the emphases put on report writing skills and developed through specially-set requirements and emphases in the first few scientific/technical labs do play an important role in the students’ progression to enhanced and improved skills. 
AU  - Ilan Gravé
CY  - Tampa, Florida
DA  - 2019/06/15
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - Improving Technical Writing Skills Through Lab Reports
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/32951
DO  - 10.18260/1-2--32951
ER  -