PI: Eric Pappas, Director, MSE Advanced Engineering Writing and Communications Program

Project Goals or Needs Addressed: The program is designed to teach writing and communications to engineering students, not only to improve their skills, but also their personal development on issues such as ethics and values in their profession. The project leads to two outcomes: tracking student progress over time and providing students with a tool to use when entering the workplace. Approximately 25% of students involved in the program use their portfolios formally as part of the interview process, and a majority of students list their portfolio experience on their resumes.
Project Grants and Expenditures: $9000 (year 8), faculty wages, faculty travel



Portfolio Assessment in Engineering Education
(Web Site)

MSE 4894, Writing in MSE, a course in which students develop a portfolio of writing from their seven core courses in MSE (PDF file)

A Brief History of the MSE/ESM Writing and Communications Program, October 2000 (PDF File)
 


The Writing and Communications Program is experienced by all students in the Materials Science and Engineering Department (MSE), and components of the program extend to other departments as well. A one-credit course is taken by MSE students to develop a portfolio of work, drawing from seven specific courses taken over three to four years. Eric Pappas teaches or team-teaches four of these courses. He discusses such topics as writing proper workplace lab reports.

SUCCEED funds provided Eric and his staff with time to conduct research on improving a pre-existing portfolio program. The writing portfolio program was upgraded to address new ABET standards and to include general communications components. The old program focused solely on writing and public speaking, while the new program includes student work on ethics, service, and environmental projects. The new portfolio is both longer and more extensive in scope.

A 1996 article by Eric Pappas in the Journal of Engineering Education highlights the success of portfolios in documenting significant increases in student writing skills. Eric was contacted by and worked with Sue Legg at the University of Florida to document the process of creating writing portfolios in engineering writing and communications programs. The project staff hoped to train others to create similar writing programs by describing "exactly what we do, how we do it, how we graded it…."

Eric provided Sue with sample writing documents in helping to create a Web site with streamed video documenting the process. As Eric described, writing portfolios may include a number of items: "…students have to turn in somewhere in the vicinity of between 80-90 pages of work... 3 or 4 lab reports and progress reports, a senior design project, another 10 page project, a number of those things that were written, evaluated by me or one of my staff members, given back, revised and resubmitted…."