(479g) Teaching Technical Communication to Chemical Engineering Undergraduate Students through the Use of a Learning Community and Linked Courses

How can technical communication principles be integrated into the chemical engineering undergraduate curriculum? For almost seven years, a learning community has linked the first of two Unit Operations laboratory courses to a technical communication course. In this learning community, students are concurrently enrolled in the courses, and the instructors work together to make sure that common elements are required in assignments. As part of the learning community, peer mentors guide students through various details about the types of reports required in the courses, as well as give feedback to report drafts.

In a previous paper [1], after two years of experience with the learning community, it was reported that significantly higher student scores were earned on written reports by students who were concurrently enrolled compared to those who were not. In the current work, four additional years of experience with the learning community are investigated and new questions are addressed to evaluate the impact of this program. Recent updates to the technical communication course include an emphasis on visual communication in both written and oral reports, and a change of report evaluation techniques in the technical communication course. The evaluations are now conducted in a “face-to-face” format. In this format, students spend up to three hours over the course of the semester in individual meetings with the English instructor, receiving feedback during review and grading of the submitted reports.

In this talk, we intend to answer the following questions: are the trends observed early in the program continuing as before? Do the students from the linked sections show retention of the information as they progress into later chemical engineering courses, such as the second Unit Operations laboratory and Process Design? How has the new report assessment process impacted student learning and perception of the importance of being able to communicate effectively?

[1] Loveland, S.D., S.D. McGough, “A Learning Community: Teaching Technical Writing in the Chemical Engineering Unit Operations Laboratory,” Proceedings of the 2014 ASEE North Midwest Section Conference, October 16-17, 2014, Iowa City, IA.