Introduction: Engineering programs must take creative approaches to ensure that their students receive needed communication instruction in curricula constantly experiencing pressures of accreditation, state, and industry requirements: expectations for students' knowledge and skills increase although curricula are compressed. Situating the case: Technical communication and engineering education scholarship describe multiple models for integrating writing instruction into engineering curricula: 1. writing across the curriculum, 2. partnership models, 3. embedded models, and 4. support models. About the case: Technical and professional writing and engineering faculty collaborated to develop a hybrid model, which borrows from multiple existing models for integrating technical writing education throughout the engineering curriculum, both in and outside of courses, including collaborative workshops, specialized writing center support, and other interventions. Methods/approach: Survey research was conducted with students on the effectiveness of multiple writing interventions. Results/discussion: The hybrid model enables students to experience a variety of writing interventions; students perceived them as beneficial. Students found most effective writing interventions occurred in the context of their engineering coursework. Faculty and administrators found the approach beneficial because of its collaborative nature and because it balanced instructional time with external support methods. Conclusions: Local solutions to universal problems must take many variables into consideration: people and programmatic cultures, disciplinary and institutional contexts, and curricular, regulatory, and funding constraints. The authors' hybrid model for integrating technical writing into the engineering curriculum represents a flexible, sustainable approach adaptable to meet specific needs in specific environments at different institutions.

The IEEE Guide to Writing in the Engineering and Technical Fields is a concise manual for engineers, technical professionals, scientists, researchers, teachers, and students to improve their writing skills. Each chapter is short—ranging from 20 to 40 pages—and the entire book is 200 pages, including appendices. The book accomplishes its purpose of providing recommendations for writing activities and for "assessing the social situation of writing, then using that assessment to make writing decisions" (p. 5). Throughout the book, the authors offer short, manageable takeaway lessons to help readers make writing decisions and learn IEEE style for references. Compared to other engineering communication textbooks and manuals, this guide is short and manageable, yet its approach still considers the rhetorical and contextual dimensions of writing. Because it is brief, the guide does not explicitly cover ethics, risk communication, information graphics, presentations, and global or international communication. It also does not provide as many examples or complete samples of the genres and best practices discussed. Finally, as with other textbooks, some genres are missing, such as reviews, evaluations, and regulations. Nevertheless, these limitations do not diminish the value of the book in giving a concise and convenient overview of standard engineering communication genres and a rhetorically grounded framework for readers to use when writing in the engineering workplace. The book has potential for use in writing-intensive courses, where students must compose documentation for labs and projects, as well as for in-house training for employees. Its hybrid framework for making decisions as you write is flexible and can be applied to many different writing situations. Furthermore, the guide offers valuable, basic help on writing mechanics. It offers readers an approach to engineering communication that can help them think about the decisions that they make when they write and make thoughtful, informed choices in their writing.

Background: Research suggests that communication instruction is particularly effective when situated in disciplinary courses. While studies show that this approach improves communication skills, less is known about how it enhances engineering learning. Literature review: Prior work includes approaches to integrating communication into engineering, studies of writing to learn, and explorations of the role of communication in identity development. Research question: How might the integration of communication instruction and practice into undergraduate engineering courses support engineering learning? Methodology: Because little is known about how communication instruction enhances engineering learning, we conducted an exploratory case study of an established integrated program in one European university. Participants included six engineering instructors, five engineering program heads, and six engineering students. Using interviews and focus groups, we explored the engineering-specific gains that faculty and students perceived from integrating communication assignments into engineering courses. Results: Our analysis yielded three salient areas of learning: 1. understanding disciplinary content, 2. selecting important information, and 3. justifying choices. While the first aligns tightly with writing-to-learn research, all three themes, in fact, bridge content learning and disciplinary literacy to enhance students' development as engineering professionals. Conclusions: Communication instruction can potentially support engineering learning through assignments that prompt students to select information in ways that are consistent with both disciplinary values and the needs of stakeholders, and make and justify decisions about approaches and solutions in ways that demonstrate sound engineering judgment.

Introduction: Faculty members have little time and usually lack expertise to provide writing feedback on lab reports. Sending students to a writing center, an existing resource on virtually all college campuses, could fill that gap. However, the majority of peer writing tutors are in nontechnical majors, and little research exists on training them to provide support for engineering students. Research question: Can peer writing tutors without technical backgrounds be trained to provide effective feedback to engineering students? About the case: Previously, sending students to the writing center was ineffective. The students did not see the value, and the tutors did not feel capable of providing feedback to them. To remedy this situation, an interdisciplinary training method was developed collaboratively by an engineering professor and the writing center director. Situating the case: Researchers have suggested that effective writing center help for engineering students is possible, and the authors have designed an interdisciplinary training method that has produced positive results. Supporting literature includes the use of generalist tutors, writing in the disciplines, genre theory, and knowledge transfer. Methods/approach: This was a three-year experiential project conducted in a junior-level engineering course. The assignment, a lab report, remained the same. Qualitative and quantitative data were collected from students and tutors. Results/discussion: Tutor feedback and student satisfaction significantly improved. However, a few students who were satisfied overall still expressed interest in having their reports reviewed by a tutor with a technical background. Conclusions: Interdisciplinary tutor training can improve the feedback of peer writing tutors, providing support for faculty efforts to improve student writing. The method requires minimal faculty time and capitalizes on existing resources.

This case study reports on the experiences of designing and assessing the effectiveness of a faculty development program on writing across the curriculum (WAC). The report focuses on the question: What are the key components of an effective faculty development program to integrate WAC into engineering and scientific courses taught by faculty in those disciplines? Situating the case: Two main models of WAC implementation exist: direct instruction, which uses writing specialists to deliver instruction to engineering and science students, and the department-centered model, which instructs faculty in engineering and scientific disciplines to teach writing as part of technical courses. How the case was studied: A report of the experiences of the authors and the feedback from the participants. About the case: The workshop was aimed at teachers in various disciplines and covered these main topics: fundamentals of writing theory and pedagogy, writing assignment design and assessment, and situating writing assignments in courses across the disciplinary curriculum. It took place over 10 weeks during a 15-week semester and included large- and small-group meetings, consultations with the members of the university WAC program, and peer review of writing assignment drafts. Conclusions, limitations, and suggestions for future research: Key challenges in developing the workshop included designing ways to bridge the conceptual gap between the participants' and WAC instructors' understanding of the role of writing in disciplinary courses, limited time available to the participants, and scheduling challenges. The workshop was given seven times. Most of the faculty participants (90%) generally found it to be very effective or effective. Studies of workshops with larger populations of trainees are suggested.

It is commonly accepted that writing instruction should meet the specific needs of writers and that students in scientific and technical fields benefit more by learning to write to match the requirements of their specific fields. A variety of models for writing classes have been proposed to meet these needs, from genre-based approaches to courses targeting specific disciplines to general courses serving a heterogeneous group of students from many disciplines. Although persuasive arguments can be made for discipline-specific writing courses, many writing courses for nonnative writers at U.S. universities operate with two key constraints. First, monetary and curricular limitations mean that students from a variety of disciplines are placed in the same course. Second, these courses are staffed by instructors who, while well-prepared in addressing language needs of nonnative writers, may know very little about the content and conventions of engineering and science. This paper discusses a writing course which works within these constraints and has been developed for graduate students who are early in their program of study. In the course, groups of students carry out an original research project as a vehicle to learn professional writing conventions common to research papers in a variety of scientific and engineering fields. In addition, students analyze written conventions in published articles within their fields to raise awareness of how general conventions are worked out in their individual disciplines. General principles for the course are discussed, and samples of successful research topics are provided.

Beginning Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) students often have difficulty learning the genre of lab report writing. This difficulty can be alleviated through genre theory strategies and research, which writing center consultants, for example, can use to focus on the specific form and content of engineering writing, which then can be taught to students in a writing center environment. Genre theory provides a means (1) for humanities writing center consultants to learn specific characteristics about engineering writing, (2) for interdisciplinary collaboration between writing professionals and engineers to take place, and (3) for students to have increased opportunities to learn the discourse of their field. All of these benefits are enhanced by discipline-specific writing programs that support and facilitate them. In addition, the collaboration provides a stimulating, fluid, creative environment in which to discuss engineering writing, an environment which reflects the changing needs of engineering education as a result of technological advancements. As technology continues to influence engineering education, prompting evolutions in both technical and communication skills and knowledge, genre theory and interdisciplinary collaboration will continue to gain importance as strategies for initiating students into the communication demands of their field. The discussion focuses on the integration of genre theory with writing instruction in the ECE Department at the University of South Carolina. This integration stimulated interaction among ECE faculty, composition and rhetoric faculty and students, and ECE students.

The paper describes the implementation of a learning community involving a technical communication course and an accounting course. Students are simultaneously registered in all the courses constituting the learning community. The learning community approach to writing instruction can be viewed as one way to implement writing across the curriculum with the following distinguishing features. First, students are registered simultaneously for both courses; the communication skills taught in one course are simultaneously reinforced in another course. Second, the faculty of the two courses interact extensively to deliver skills (e.g., communication skills) in a coherent manner across the two courses. We describe the development of a theoretical framework for connecting the two courses. This theoretical framework guided implementation decisions such as the choice of communication skills to be covered in the accounting course, the design of assignments, and the design of evaluation criteria. While we focus on the integration of an accounting course with a communication course, the learning community approach and the implementation steps are applicable to other disciplines.

Do university writing experiences prepare students for future job-related writing tasks? If not, how can we create a smoother transition from the academy to the workplace? The author analyzes the differing discourse communities of academic writing and technical communication which may limit the transfer of skills from one arena to the next. The discussion considers the ways process, collaborative learning, writing across the curriculum, and language theories can form the foundation for constructive communication among disciplines. As the focus of academic writing moves from an emphasis on the individual to social context and wider audiences, it bridges the gap between disciplines and can ease the movement from the classroom to real-world settings.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>