Incorporating writing into lab and design courses: an educational materials development project

Responding to requests by industry for greater emphasis on communication, engineering faculty are trying to incorporate writing assignments into their courses. Incorporating writing assignments into engineering courses often presents challenges for engineering faculty as far as the design, interactive teaching, and evaluation of those assignments. Here, the authors describe how they have worked together to develop and distribute a set of teaching materials that will help engineering faculty incorporate writing assignments into laboratory and design courses. The materials consist of: (1) a succinct and adaptable style guide; (2) a set of adaptable presentation visuals and their corresponding notes pages; and (3) a Web-based instructor´s handbook.