Asee peer logo

Preparing Engineering Graduate Students to Engage in Scholarly Communications

Download Paper |

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

Engineering Libraries Division (ELD) Technical Session 1

Tagged Division

Engineering Libraries Division (ELD)

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/47864

Request a correction

Paper Authors

biography

Dianna Morganti Texas A&M University

visit author page

Prof. Dianna Morganti is an Instructional Associate Professor at Texas A&M University teaching research-informed writing and publication practices to PhD students throughout the College of Engineering. She brings a focus on information literacy to the critical review of scholarly communication practices in the classroom.

visit author page

author page

Angie Dunn Texas A&M University

Download Paper |

Abstract

The typical engineering degree plan has several important gaps when reviewed against the research lifecycle. These gaps are often filled in by students themselves learning ad hoc, by overworked faculty over numerous mentoring sessions, or – more often – by the engineering research librarians in workshops and consultations. Purposeful incorporation of a curriculum that fills those gaps, though, can prepare students better for the norms of academia, for the process of research publication, and for critical review of scholarship.

Research librarians with both engineering and scholarly communication expertise are uniquely situated to fill in the gaps of the research lifecycle. Scholarly communication skills are vital for high-impact research writing – understanding and critically evaluating scientometrics, reviewing conferences and journals, evaluation and review of literature, navigating authorship, planning for data management, understanding various paper types, interpreting disciplinary norms, and more.

In 2022, the author designed and proposed the semester-long course “Research Lifecycle and Publication in Engineering” to the Multidisciplinary Engineering Department. The first course offering was in Spring of 2023, and the students (and their mentors) had overwhelmingly positive evaluations. Student comments showed that an introduction to scholarly communications at the early PhD stage was also an introduction to the culture and norms of academia. Many of the students submitted their course papers to conferences or journals (some here at ASEE!), practicing some of the scholarly skills learned in this first-year PhD course. The department made the “Research Lifecycle…” course mandatory for all Interdisciplinary Engineering PhD students, after its first semester.

This paper will present the course design for “Research Lifecycle and Publication in Engineering”. It will encourage engineering research librarians, teaching faculty, and curriculum committees in engineering to collaborate to prepare their students to engage in the full research lifecycle.

Morganti, D., & Dunn, A. (2024, June), Preparing Engineering Graduate Students to Engage in Scholarly Communications Paper presented at 2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Portland, Oregon. https://peer.asee.org/47864

ASEE holds the copyright on this document. It may be read by the public free of charge. Authors may archive their work on personal websites or in institutional repositories with the following citation: © 2024 American Society for Engineering Education. Other scholars may excerpt or quote from these materials with the same citation. When excerpting or quoting from Conference Proceedings, authors should, in addition to noting the ASEE copyright, list all the original authors and their institutions and name the host city of the conference. - Last updated April 1, 2015