An analysis of engineering students´ use of instructor feedback and an online writing tutorial during drafting and revision

This study is part of an ongoing research effort to provide every engineering student the opportunity to learn technical communication concepts via an integrated system of learning and feedback tools, including an online technical communication learning resource developed for this population. Students in a junior-level engineering course were presented with two different forms of instructor feedback on their writing tasks: in-line comments embedded in the students´ papers, and an “interactive pdf” rubric that included summative feedback based on the in-line comments, as well as hyperlinks that, if clicked, take students directly to pertinent module in our online writing tutorial. Because the online tutorial tracks students´ login and access data, we were able to monitor if, whether, and when students were using our online tool during drafting and revision periods. Results indicate that although the interactive pdf increased traffic slightly to the online tutorials (as compared to a previous cohort), students prefer to rely on the instructor´s in-line comments as a just-in-time revision strategy.