TY - JOUR
T1 - Work in progress
T2 - 126th ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition: Charged Up for the Next 125 Years, ASEE 2019
AU - Jensen, Karin
AU - Jensen, Paul
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© American Society for Engineering Education, 2019
PY - 2019/6/15
Y1 - 2019/6/15
N2 - This paper is a Work in Progress to describe the implementation of alternative lab reports in biomedical engineering curriculum. Communication skills are critical for engineering students to succeed in a wide variety of careers. This necessity is recognized by ABET in student outcome 3 “an ability to communicate effectively with a range of audiences” [1]. Despite this, students may not view written communication skills as an important skill for engineers. Technical writing instruction and practice is often implemented in undergraduate laboratory courses where students write standard lab reports (abstract, introduction, materials and methods, results, discussion) that most closely resemble a scientific journal article. In an effort to demonstrate to students how they might communicate about experimental data in different ways and to prompt them to consider communicating data to a range of audiences and for varying purposes, we developed alternative lab report assignments for a biomedical engineering laboratory course offered to sophomore undergraduates. In addition to developing written communication skills, the writing assignments were designed to demonstrate to students how they might write in careers in the biotech industry. Here we describe the implementation of alternative lab reports for a cell and tissue engineering lab course. We present the implementation of the report structure, associated rubric used for all reports, preliminary student feedback, and limitations of the approach.
AB - This paper is a Work in Progress to describe the implementation of alternative lab reports in biomedical engineering curriculum. Communication skills are critical for engineering students to succeed in a wide variety of careers. This necessity is recognized by ABET in student outcome 3 “an ability to communicate effectively with a range of audiences” [1]. Despite this, students may not view written communication skills as an important skill for engineers. Technical writing instruction and practice is often implemented in undergraduate laboratory courses where students write standard lab reports (abstract, introduction, materials and methods, results, discussion) that most closely resemble a scientific journal article. In an effort to demonstrate to students how they might communicate about experimental data in different ways and to prompt them to consider communicating data to a range of audiences and for varying purposes, we developed alternative lab report assignments for a biomedical engineering laboratory course offered to sophomore undergraduates. In addition to developing written communication skills, the writing assignments were designed to demonstrate to students how they might write in careers in the biotech industry. Here we describe the implementation of alternative lab reports for a cell and tissue engineering lab course. We present the implementation of the report structure, associated rubric used for all reports, preliminary student feedback, and limitations of the approach.
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U2 - 10.18260/1-2--32387
DO - 10.18260/1-2--32387
M3 - Conference article
AN - SCOPUS:85078759480
SN - 2153-5965
JO - ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition, Conference Proceedings
JF - ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition, Conference Proceedings
Y2 - 15 June 2019 through 19 June 2019
ER -