Preparing Students for Writing in Civil Engineering Practice: Research-based Materials Development and Assessment

该项目旨在解决工程教育中一个长期存在的问题：项目毕业生的写作技能与工作场所的写作需求之间的不匹配。这个项目是通过分析学生写作和高质量的从业者写作来发现大学生写作中存在的问题。一个由语言学家和工程师组成的团队正在通过开发教材来解决这些问题，这些教材将有效组织、语法和词汇的教学整合到土木工程课程中。在使用新教材后，学生的写作水平将从多个角度进行评估，包括语言特征、组织和整体效果。该项目有许多创新特点，有助于其智力价值：将工程实践者的观点整合到课堂教材中，写作技巧和工程内容的综合，使用实证分析来识别学生的写作弱点，以及应用多种方法来评估教学材料的有效性。该项目更广泛的影响包括：来自土木工程专业代表性不足的群体的学生比例很高的大学的参与；较强的写作能力有助于他们参与这一领域。此外，有效的沟通已被发现是基础设施项目成功的最大变量；文件沟通不畅会浪费时间和纳税人的钱，甚至会造成伤亡。因此，教土木工程师更有效地写作的好处远远超出了土木工程专业本身。

This project is addressing a persistent problem in engineering education: the mismatch between the writing skills of program graduates and the demands of writing in the workplace. This project is identifying problems in undergraduate student writing by analyzing student writing and high quality practitioner writing. A team of linguists and engineers is then addressing the problems by developing teaching materials that integrate instruction about effective organization, grammar, and vocabulary into civil engineering classes. After the use of the new materials, student writing improvement is being assessed from multiple perspectives that cover language features, organization, and overall effectiveness. The project has many innovative features that contribute to its intellectual merit: the integration of engineering practitioners' perspectives into classroom teaching materials, the synthesis of writing skills and engineering content, the use of empirical analysis to identify student writing weaknesses, and the application of multiple methods to assess the instructional materials' effectiveness. The project's broader impacts include the participation of universities with a high percentage of students from groups that are underrepresented in civil engineering; stronger writing skills can facilitate their participation in this field. Furthermore, effective communication has been found to be the single largest variable in infrastructure project success; poor communication in documents can lead to a waste of time and taxpayer dollars and even to injuries and death. Thus, the benefits of teaching civil engineers to write more effectively extend far beyond the profession of civil engineering itself.