2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This paper reports on a work in progress collaboration between Engineering and English faculty at Texas A&M Qatar, and examines the initial impact of the team’s reorganization of a required Technical Professional Writing course on engineering students' educational experience as they learn effective and relevant professional communication skills in the field of engineering; as they network with mentors from various industries; and as they train to be effective writers and competitive candidates in their engineering fields.
While many engineering programs require several technical writing courses, our undergraduate engineering students at Texas A&M University Qatar take only ONE course in Technical Professional Communication (ENGL 210), followed by a selection of WI courses spread out in their degree plan. However, faculty still identified a continuing gap between their expectations of students’ communication skills and what students have demonstrated in classes, including upper-division and capstone courses. How can we ensure the continuity of certain writing tools and skills throughout the student’s writing journey at TAMUQ? How can we present opportunities for English and engineering faculty to share their assessments, rubrics, or other teaching tools so as to effectively support the student’s communication development?
Our research group is comprised of two Engineering faculty and two English faculty (one of whom is also a Writing in the Disciplines Coordinator – WID). Through extensive meetings and discussions, sharing of assignments and students' work, and review of course objectives and assessments, our team redesigned the required ENGL 210 to focus on what engineering faculty identify as relevant aspects of writing in the field of engineering: problem statements, research and literature reviews, project proposals, progress reports, and scientific poster design, with additional focus on integrating UX design and data visualization in the students’ projects. We created assessments that more closely align with engineering faculty and industry professionals’ expectations for effective oral and written communication. We also brought industry professionals to campus to discuss topics such as the importance of clear communication in engineering workplaces and effective team collaboration.
We hypothesize that the significant collaboration between English and Engineering faculty in developing assignments, providing feedback to students throughout their projects, and assessing students’ final products, as well as the partnership with various partner industries, considerably improves our students’ writing journey at TAMUQ as they learn effective and relevant professional communication skills in the field of engineering. We also discuss the steps forward to make this collaboration a model for other courses in our curriculum at our institution.