Penulisan Akademik Laporan Projek Tahun Akhir Pelajar Seni Reka Perindustrian Institusi Pengajian Tinggi di Malaysia

The focus of this research is to evaluate academic writing for final year project report by industrial design students in Malaysian institutions of higher education. It is compulsory for students to produce a final year project report at the end of their studies. In this study, six final year project reports were collected from two universities in Malaysia, namely, Universiti Malaysia Sarawak and Universiti Teknologi MARA. In addition, six academic experts from selected universities were also interviewed to obtain their point of view on scholarly training of Industrial Design students at university level. The results showed that there were no standard references and guidelines for the Industrial Design field. Confusion on writing guidelines has led to a lack of awareness of academic writing conventions among Industrial Design students. This is added on by students’ lack of reading and this causes students to take an easy way out by plagiarising. Based on the analysis, there are nine components proposed in academic writing structural model which are Front Matter, Introduction, Literature Review, Research Methodology, Data Analysis and Findings, Final Product Recommendation and Human Factor Issues, Intellectual Property Documentation, Conclusions and Back Matter. Through the validation process, the proposed structural model was well accepted by two experienced academics. The proposed structural model provides students with understanding of Industrial Design Final Year Project report conventions in academic writing