Authenticity Promotes Student Engagement and Learning in a Stand-Alone Technical Communications Course

摘要

Technical Communications for Chemical Engineers has recently been reintroduced to the chemical engineering undergraduate curriculum at the University of California, Berkeley. The goal of the course is for students to gain skills in written, oral, and interpersonal communications that will help them excel in their careers and in senior-level capstone design and laboratory courses. The course runs as a one-semester, stand-alone course (not coupled to a complementary technical or laboratory course) with assignments ranging from laboratory reports, design reports, resumes, cover letters, interviews, technical presentations, and project proposals to communication with lay audiences. This paper takes a case study approach to examine the evolution of the laboratory report assignment over the course of three semesters. We found that incorporating additional authenticity into laboratory report writing assignment motivated student engagement and learning. Midterm and final course evaluations are used as data to reflect on the effectiveness of three iterations of the assignment: (1) Fall 2011: Common Topic; Data from physical experiment conducted by an unknown student; (2) Spring 2012: Individual Topic; Data from physical experiment conducted by the student in a previous course; (3) Fall 2012: Common Topic; Data from simulation conducted by the student in this course.