scholarly journals Interdisciplinary Pedagogical Actions to Optimize Engineering Undergraduate Written Production

10.29007/6434 ◽  
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alicia Noceti

Writing is extremely challenging for engineering students. Navarro (2012) asserts that academic literacy in the mother tongue is similar to learning a foreign language as it involves immersion in a new culture. Food Engineering undergraduates (School of Food Science, University of Entre Ríos) face this difficulty when they have to write their Final Project. As a consequence, interdisciplinary actions were implemented by engineers and linguists (both in English and Spanish) in order to raise students´ awareness of this genre characteristics, to facilitate its production and to write relevant titles and abstracts. The importance of both title and abstract is paramount once the Final Projects are uploaded to the university website in order to attract readers. The objective of this study was to explore whether interdisciplinary actions could optimize undergraduates´ written production. All titles produced since the first Food Engineer graduated were collected. This corpus analysis revealed that titles were extremely short and provided very little information. Consequently, pedagogical activities were designed and implemented as from 2012. An exploration of antecedent or prior genre knowledge (Artemeva, N. & Fox., J., 2010) was carried out in different workshops. Generic structure, audience awareness, rhetorical functions and linguistic features studied in the English courses were activated. Writing seminars in Spanish were implemented in 5º year. In addition, undergraduates attended tutorials with the engineers and then and then interviews with the linguists. In several meetings students discussed titles and abstracts (in Spanish and English), designed their slides for the oral defense and rehearsed their oral presentations. The analysis of the corpus including all projects´ titles defended within the time window that included our actions indicated that students had activated their previous generic knowledge. Feedback from students, after graduation, demonstrated that interdisciplinary activities included language as an across the curriculum content and contributed to the adequate production of academic genres. Results may affect curricular design and decisions at the macro level since implementation of writing seminars along undergraduates´ trajectories has been positioned as a top priority.

Author(s):  
Jeremiah Vanderlaan ◽  
Josh Richert ◽  
James Morrison ◽  
Thomas Doyle

We are a group of engineering students, in our first year of undergraduate study. We have been selected from one thousand first year students and have competed and won the PACE competition. All engineers share a common general first year, but we have been accepted into Civil and Mechanical engineering. This project was assigned as the final project in the Design and Graphics course. The project we are tasked with, called the Cornerstone Design Project, is to first dissect a product, discover how it works, dimension each part and create a fully assembled model using CAD software (Solid Edge V20 in our case). As part of discovering how it works we must benchmark it so the device can be compared with competing products. The goal of the project is to develop a full understanding of part modeling and assembly in Solid Edge, learn proper measurement techniques, and learn the process of reverse engineering and product dissection. All of these tasks were stepping stones to help us fully understand how the device, and all its components, work.


2021 ◽  
Vol 137 (2) ◽  
pp. 344-361
Author(s):  
Philippe Del Giudice

Abstract A new project has just been launched to write a synchronic, descriptive grammar of Niçois, the Occitan dialect of Nice. In this article, I define the corpus of the research. To do so, I first review written production from the Middle Ages to the present. I then analyze the linguistic features of Niçois over time, in order to determine the precise starting point of the current language state. But because of reinforced normativism and the decreasing social use of Niçois among the educated population, written language after WWII became artificial and does not really correspond to recordings made in the field. The corpus will thus be composed of writings from the 1820’s to WWII and recordings from the last few decades.


Author(s):  
Shurli Makmillen ◽  
Michelle Riedlinger

AbstractThis study contributes to research into genre innovation and scholarship exploring how Indigenous epistemes are disrupting dominant discourses of the academy. Using a case study approach, we investigated 31 research articles produced by Mäori scholars and published in the journal AlterNative between 2006 and 2018. We looked for linguistic features associated with self-positioning and self-identification. We found heightened ambiguous uses of “we”; a prevalence of verbs associated with personal (as opposed to discursive) uses of “I/we”; personal storytelling; and a privileging of Elders’ contributions to the existing state of knowledge. We argue these features reflect and reinforce Indigenous scholars’ social relations with particular communities of practice within and outside of the academy. They are also in keeping with Indigenous knowledge-making practices, protocols, and languages, and signal sites of negotiation and innovation in the research article. We present the implications for rhetorical genre studies and for teaching academic genres.


Author(s):  
Shaker Ali Al-Mohammadi ◽  
Emira Derbel

Writing is a complex process and used of course for an incalculable range of purposes and audiences. Teaching students to write in their mother tongue is hard, but teaching them to do this in a second or foreign language is even harder. This chapter focuses on the question of audience in teaching and learning writing, arguing that it is vital for students to be aware of an audience that eventually determines what, why, and how they will write. It seeks to provide a thorough understanding of Omani EFL students' conception of audience and their current level of audience awareness and also to explore the relationship between audience awareness and students' performance in composition classes and tests.


Author(s):  
Adhiti T. Raman ◽  
Venkat N. Krovi ◽  
Matthias J. A. Schmid

A new class of distributed, autonomous systems is emerging, capable of exploiting multimodal distributed and networked spatial and temporal data (at significantly larger scales). A renaissance autonomy engineer requires proficiency in both traditional engineering concepts as well as a systems engineering skillset for implementing the ensuing complex systems. In this paper, we describe goals, development and first offering of a scaffolded course: “AuE 893 Autonomy: Science and Systems” to begin addressing this goal. Geared towards graduate engineering students, with limited prior exposure, the course complements the concepts from traditional courses (on mobile-robotics) with experiential hands-on system-integration efforts (building on the F1tenth.org kits). The staged course structure initially builds upon open-source Robotics Operating System (ROS) tutorials on simulated systems (Gazebo/RViz) with networked communication; Hardware-in-the-loop realization (with a Turtlebot platform) then aids the exploration (and reinforcement) of autonomy concepts. The course culminates in a final-project comprising performance testing with student-team integrated scaled Autonomous Remote Control cars (based on the F1tenth.org parts-list). All three student teams were successful in navigating around a closed racecourse at speeds of 10–15 miles per hour, using Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) for situational awareness and obstacle-avoidance. We conclude with discussion of lessons-learnt and opportunities for future improvement.


Author(s):  
Chico Hermanu Brillianto Apribowo ◽  
Mohammad Hakim Adhiguna ◽  
Feri Adriyanto ◽  
Hari Maghfiroh

<p class="Abstract">Understanding that electrical engineering graduates who have experience and are able to know the electric power system in the industry are the main thoughts of the writer to conduct research. Through the manufacture of a three-phase ac motor control practicum module, which is the type of motor most often used in industrial activities, is expected to provide more knowledge to prospective graduates of electrical engineering engineers. The author determines the two previous research categories chosen as references, namely the training of electric motor modules and the final project of electrical engineering students. In this study the ATV12HU15M2 inverter is used to control changing the frequency value as an input variable to determine its effect on output variables such as voltage, current, power, rpm, and THD. Equipped with SoMove software that is connected to the laptop to be able to change the value of input variables such as motor power, number of poles, and power factors to match the specifications of the electric motor used, the software can also monitor if an error occurs in the system. At the measurement stage, the measuring instrument used is a Power Analyzer to measure the input power of a single-phase system at the source grid PLN, the output power of a three-phase electric motor system, and experimental measurements of motors coupled with a dc generator. For the purposes of data processing, DataView software is used to display the measurement results into a laptop, the resulting display can be in the form of a waveform graph, a graph of THD occurrence, and power information for which the displayed data can be stored. The THD result most optimal at 50Hz frequency with THDv value 18.69% and THDi value 9.04%.</p><p class="Keywords"> </p>


Author(s):  
Wael A. Mokhtar

Project-Based Service-Learning (PBSL) offers a unique and rich educational experience for engineering students. The present work highlights some of its aspects through the discussion of a multi-level design and build project. A service project was assigned to two teams of junior and senior students. The project was to design and build a bubble tower for the local children’s museum. The tower was completed in two phases. In the first phase, it was assigned as a final project in a junior level course. In the second phase, another team of seniors was added to lead the design optimization and building of the tower as their capstone experience. The Service-Learning (SL) nature of the project and having two teams at different academic levels added challenges and benefits to the students. The details of this unique experience are discussed and samples from the students’ work are presented. The project was completed successfully with positive feedback from the students, the customer and the local community. Reflections about this project and recommendations for future use of similar SL are also presented.


Author(s):  
Claudia Marcela Chapetón

This paper is based on the analysis of the nature of the first language influence on the written production of an Italian learner of English as a foreign language. The goal of the present exploratory study is to examine how cross-linguistic influence manifests itself at the level of syntax and lexis. Findings suggest that forms and  meanings in the L2 are expressed and shaped by the learner’s knowledge and use of  the foreign language as well as by the influence of the mother tongue.


2018 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 646-674 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sheena Gardner ◽  
Hilary Nesi ◽  
Douglas Biber

Abstract While there have been many investigations of academic genres, and of the linguistic features of academic discourse, few studies have explored how these interact across a range of university student writing situations. To counter misconceptions that have arisen regarding student writing, this article aims to provide comprehensive linguistic descriptions of a wide range of university assignment genres in relation to multiple situational variables. Our new multidimensional (MD) analysis of the British Academic Written English (BAWE) corpus identifies clusters of linguistic features along four dimensions, onto which academic disciplines, disciplinary groups, levels of study, and genre families are mapped. The dimensions are interpreted through text extracts as: (i) Compressed Procedural Information versus Stance towards the Work of Others; (ii) Personal Stance; (iii) Possible Events versus Completed Events; and (iv) Informational Density. Clusters of linguistic features from the comprehensive set of situational perspectives found across this framework can be selected to inform the teaching of a ‘common academic core’, and to inform the design of programmes tailored to the needs of specific disciplines.


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