Collaborative partnerships: writing in the engineering classroom (using undergraduate course assistants from the English department to improve writing skills in science and engineering students)

This interactive session will demonstrate the use of undergraduate course assistants (UCAs) from liberal arts majors, typically the English department, to promote the effective written communication skills of freshman engineering students. The session demonstrates a collaborative learning experience that will allow participants to create a similar learning experience in their classroom and/or institution. One presenter has successfully used UCAs from the English department in the freshman engineering program for ten years. For the past three years, UCAs, under the guidance of the authors, have worked in the materials science course for sophomores, and the senior design capstone project. The objective of this session is to provide participants with a model and help them develop a model of their own that will improve the written communication skills of science and engineering students by incorporating the use of UCAs into the engineering classroom.