Collaboration, English composition, and the engineering student: constructing knowledge in the Integrated Engineering Program

To meet the needs of today´s engineering in a global technology-based environment, programs like the Freshman Integrated Program in Engineering (FIPE) must produce engineers who can work creatively in teams. Our program must also produce students who can think critically about engineering, who can construct knowledge in teams, and who can do so both through talking and through writing. To meet this goal, we present writing as problem-solving thereby helping students to construct knowledge about issues and ethical dilemmas in engineering through writing. Hence, English composition can enhance and reinforce the construction of knowledge that is occurring in other classes the students take. If the composition teacher ties collaborative writing tasks to engineering issues and ethical dilemmas, the students will benefit in two ways: from the practice they gain in collaborative writing before they take more senior technical writing classes; and from the ability to explore issues and ethics that other classes may raise but do not have time to thoroughly develop. One example of a collaborative writing task on which students collaborate from invention to final revision is the team research paper our students write on a technological versus a social fix to a problem they choose to study. Our paper briefly addresses the composition theory behind collaborative writing and then shows how students can collaborate on such a paper from invention to revision