2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Assessing Faculty Implementation of Laboratory Report Writing Instructional Modules

Presented at Teaching Tools: Communication (NEE)

“An ability to develop and conduct appropriate experimentation, analyze and interpret data, and use engineering judgment to draw conclusions” is a fundamental outcome of all engineering programs. Students conduct laboratory experiments in all areas of engineering and report on their findings. New faculty, however, have little experience or training in how to develop effective lab report assignments nor how to instruct students on how to write laboratory reports. In an effort to improve both the teaching and learning of laboratory report writing, engineering educators from three distinct universities (one large public research university, one small public polytechnic university, and one private undergraduate university) developed a series of online laboratory report writing instructional modules. These modules were presented to laboratory instructors—all with less than three years of teaching experience—and graduate teaching assistants at a Community of Practice (COP) retreat in the spring of 2022. Focus groups were conducted with the instructors and assistants to determine the potential benefits and shortcomings of the modules, after which the modules underwent significant revisions. Near the conclusion of the COP retreat, participants reported feeling motivated to implement the newly revised modules to improve their laboratory report writing instruction. Follow-up focus groups were conducted in the fall to determine if this motivation remained high throughout the summer and resulted in the development of new and improved laboratory assignments in the new academic year. The paper will briefly introduce the modules and present the results of these focus group meetings.

Authors

Dr. Sean St. Clair Oregon Institute of Technology [biography]

Sean St.Clair is a Professor in the Civil Engineering Department at Oregon Tech, where he teaches structural engineering courses and conducts research in engineering education. He is also a registered Professional Engineer.
Dr. Dave Kim http://orcid.org/https://0000-0003-1640-9030 Washington State University, Vancouver [biography]

Dr. Dave Kim is Professor and Mechanical Engineering Program Coordinator in the School of Engineering and Computer Science at Washington State University Vancouver. His teaching and research have been in the areas of engineering materials, fracture mechanics, and manufacturing processes. In particular, he has been very active in pedagogical research in the area of writing pedagogy in engineering laboratory courses. Dr. Kim and his collaborators attracted close to $1M in research grants to study writing transfer of engineering undergraduates. For technical research, he has a long-standing involvement in research concerned with the manufacturing of advanced composite materials (CFRP/titanium stack, GFRP, nanocomposites, etc.) for marine and aerospace applications. His recent research efforts have also included the fatigue behavior of manufactured products, with a focus on fatigue strength improvement of aerospace, automotive, and rail structures. He has been the author or co-author of over 180 peer-reviewed papers in these areas.
Dr. Charles Riley, P.E. http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7993-437X Oregon Institute of Technology [biography]

Dr. Riley has been teaching mechanics concepts for over 10 years and has been honored with both the ASCE ExCEEd New Faculty Excellence in Civil Engineering Education Award (2012) and the Beer and Johnston Outstanding New Mechanics Educator Award (2013).

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