Case studies of technical report writing development among student engineers

This research examines factors that either promote or hinder workplace writing among Chemical Engineering students during their study in two Technical Report writing courses. It examines the extent to which a workplace writing environment, which instructors believe they create, is actually enacted in the classroom, and also explores the differences in intended and actual learning outcomes between instructors and students.A number of qualitative research methods were used to gather data for sixteen student case studies. These methods include taped and transcribed interviews with students and the two course instructors, an analysis of all student reports and course documentation, classroom observations, taped student-professor conferences, and taped responses from both instructors as they evaluated each student report.Research findings suggest that students learned the required technical report format since everyone passed the course. Findings further suggest, however, that explicit efforts to enact a professional chemical engineering writing environment within this university context were generally unsuccessful. Writing tasks did not reflect an authentic workplace writing situation where writers believed their composing purpose was to communicate with others within their community of Chemical Engineering. Even though attempts were made by instructors to create such an environment, the writing task actually became a school-based exercise where students learned to provide the right textual format in order to meet with both teacher expectations and writing success.The study concludes that educators must be aware of their real teaching and learning agendas and that these objectives must be conveyed adequately to students. Findings also reinforce the difficulty of enacting authentic workplace writing contexts within academic environments, and ways to achieve this goal are discussed. This research also contributes to evolving theoretical discussions about writing and the teaching of writing