2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Clear communication is essential for engineering students to improve their conceptual understanding of core material and to communicate their ideas and research in professional settings effectively. However, curricular efforts to improve writing in engineering often emphasize lab reports, technical memos, or other professional genres. Homework problem sets are often overlooked as a form of written communication, yet these assignments offer a critical opportunity for skill development early in students’ training. Addressing errors in homework problems related to organization and process can help reveal conceptual misunderstandings and allows instructors to better support student learning.

This paper describes the development and launch of a homework guide for undergraduate students in Chemical Engineering and Materials Science. Faculty and instructors in a combined Chemical Engineering and Materials Science department collaborated with staff in the Writing Enriched Curriculum (WEC) program to establish graduation-level writing expectations for the two undergraduate programs offered by the department. As part of the initial implementation effort in this multiyear collaboration, department instructors, teaching assistants, and WEC staff explored the elements of effective homework responses (e.g., defining assumptions, writing key mathematical formulas, commenting code, and annotating figures). These elements were incorporated into a single homework guide and implemented in undergraduate engineering courses including sophomore level chemical engineering and mixed level material science and engineering courses. The guide was briefly presented to students in class, modeled when working example problems, and reinforced via homework assignment scoring, but no additional in-class instruction or changes to homework practices were instituted. In addition to collecting students' scores, students were surveyed three times during the semester about their use of the guide and its value.

Following the initial implementation in chemical engineering, student responses were largely positive, with more than half reporting that use of the guide helped organize and clarify their thinking, helped their learning and exam performance, and improved their confidence. The feedback from the materials science and engineering course identified a need to further emphasize the guidelines as a strategy for organization that should be adapted to meet the needs of diverse problem requirements. Overall, this work provides an example implementation of a low time demand educational tool that can be introduced early and incorporated throughout the engineering curriculum to support student communication and conceptual understanding of course material.