Preparing Students for Writing in Civil Engineering Practice: Research-based Materials Development and Assessment

Portland State University, Portland OR

Investigators

Abstract

This project is addressing a persistent problem in engineering education: the mismatch between the writing skills of program graduates and the demands of writing in the workplace. This project is identifying problems in undergraduate student writing by analyzing student writing and high quality practitioner writing. A team of linguists and engineers is then addressing the problems by developing teaching materials that integrate instruction about effective organization, grammar, and vocabulary into civil engineering classes. After the use of the new materials, student writing improvement is being assessed from multiple perspectives that cover language features, organization, and overall effectiveness. The project has many innovative features that contribute to its intellectual merit: the integration of engineering practitioners' perspectives into classroom teaching materials, the synthesis of writing skills and engineering content, the use of empirical analysis to identify student writing weaknesses, and the application of multiple methods to assess the instructional materials' effectiveness. The project's broader impacts include the participation of universities with a high percentage of students from groups that are underrepresented in civil engineering; stronger writing skills can facilitate their participation in this field. Furthermore, effective communication has been found to be the single largest variable in infrastructure project success; poor communication in documents can lead to a waste of time and taxpayer dollars and even to injuries and death. Thus, the benefits of teaching civil engineers to write more effectively extend far beyond the profession of civil engineering itself.