Enhancing technical writing skills for undergraduate engineering students

Context: Effective technical writing is an essential skill for professional engineers. Graduate engineers spend 30n40% of their day writing, and professional engineering organisations consistently list communication as a key graduate competency. At the same time, technical writing is one of the least developed technical skills in engineering undergraduate programs. This paper discusses the initiatives and outcomes of a pilot program in the School of Chemical Engineering at The University of Queensland (UQ) designed to enhance the technical writing skills of engineering students. Purpose: The aim of this pilot study is to enhance the technical writing skills of engineering students by embedding an integrated and progressive technical writing program in core undergraduate engineering courses. Approach: In this pilot study, a multi-disciplinary team comprising academics from the School of Chemical Engineering and the School of Communication and Arts at UQ collaborated to develop, deliver, and evaluate a series of new writing lectures and workshops embedded in core chemical engineering courses. The content of these materials was informed by a literature review of best practice in engineering writing programs, a survey of Australian industry, and a curation of e-resources including the UQ Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) on writing and grammar. Results: Early results from the pilot program are promising. We found that most students valued the technical writing support and they were able to incorporate feedback from teachers to improve the quality of their written assessments. The pilot study also highlighted the challenges of implementing program-wide changes to the established curriculum, including engaging studentsi attention in technical writing workshops and obtaining the support of other academics. Conclusions: Early results from this work show that is possible to enhance the writing skills of undergraduate engineering students by embedding active learning activities in their core engineering courses. Future work in this project will investigate how to expand the reach of technical writing activities across the School of Chemical Engineering and across the Engineering Faculty.