scholarly journals EFL Engineering Students’ Research Article Genre Knowledge Development through Concept Mapping Tasks: A Qualitative Interview-based Study

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 45
Author(s):  
Emmanouela Seiradakis ◽  
Ioannis Spantidakis
Keyword(s):  
Concept Mapping ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Genre Analysis ◽  
Computer Engineering ◽  
Primary Research ◽  
Research Article ◽  
Different Dimensions ◽  
Second Year ◽  
Genre Knowledge

This qualitative study explores how the use of concept mapping can function as a genre knowledge scaffold within an experimental course that aimed to teach EFL undergraduate students how to read primary research articles in their discipline. Using semi-structured student interviews, the study explored the development of the rhetorical, formal, process and content research article genre facets of three second-year Electrical and Computer Engineering students after working collaboratively on three specially designed concept mapping tasks underpinned by the theories of genre analysis and metacognition. Our data suggest that the process of visual conceptualization encouraged students to engage in deeper forms of genre analysis and explore the different dimensions of the multifaced research article genre construct.

scholarly journals ONLINE COURSE DESIGN AND MATERIALS DEVELOPMENT FOR TEACHING READING OF RESEARCH ARTICLES TO EFL UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS AT A GREEK TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY

2018 ◽  
pp. 285 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emmanuela Vardis Seiradakis ◽  
Ioannis Spantidakis
Keyword(s):  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Procedural Knowledge ◽  
Course Design ◽  
Strategy Training ◽  
Research Articles ◽  
Genre Analysis ◽  
Computer Engineering ◽  
Materials Development ◽  
Genre Knowledge

Recent research findings suggest that reading research articles (RAs) enhances undergraduate engineering students’ technical knowledge and fosters their lifelong learning skills. Nevertheless, the RA genre inherently displays challenging features for novice readers, especially EFL readers. Previous works on developing materials for teaching the reading of RAs to undergraduate students are limited and mostly report on the effectiveness of interventions rather than on course design and materials development. This paper presents the design and development of online materials for a Moodle-based, English for Specific Academic Purposes course that aimed to help Greek undergraduate Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) students to learn how to read RAs within their field. The materials design was based on the theories of genre analysis, metacognition and cognitive apprenticeship. Initially, a small RA corpus consisting of thirty RAs from high-ranking ECE journals and conferences from IEEE, ACM, Elsevier and Springer was created in cooperation with the ECE faculty. Subsequently, a move analysis was performed based on a simplified coding scheme of rhetorical moves in the target genre adjusted to the needs of novice Greek EFL readers. The results from our corpus analysis were used as the foundation of the genre-based materials that aimed at fostering learners’ declarative, procedural and conditional genre knowledge and included various examples of move structures and patterns, terminology, grammar as well as weekly genre analysis reflective tasks. We then created materials that intended to provide further support so that students could convert their newly acquired genre knowledge into procedural knowledge and explicitly taught top-down RA expeditious reading strategies and conditional knowledge by including metacognitive strategy training that intended to raise their awareness of when and why they should use the taught strategies. In an attempt to further tailor the materials to the needs of our students we included audiovisual enhancements in both L1 and L2 for presentation and feedback purposes, metacognitive prompts, online dictionaries and concordancers.

scholarly journals Socially-shared Metacognitive Regulation Episodes Between Undergraduate Engineering Students During a Collaborative Genre Analysis Task in an English for Academic Purposes Course

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 217
Author(s):  
Emmanouela Seiradakis ◽  
Ιoannis Spantidakis
Keyword(s):  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Related Problem ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
English For Academic Purposes ◽  
Genre Analysis ◽  
Undergraduate Engineering ◽  
Research Article ◽  
Analysis Task ◽  
Metacognitive Regulation ◽  
Academic Genres

Recent findings suggest that genre-based tasks such as move analysis when underpinned by the theory of metacognition can familiarize undergraduate students with newly encountered academic genres such as the research article. However, there still is a limited understanding about how and when novices engage in socially shared metacognitive regulation processes (SSMR) during online collaborative genre analysis tasks. The purpose of this study was to identify when and how a small group of undergraduate engineering students engaged in SSMR processes during a collaborative online move analysis wiki task. Results suggest SSMR was frequently triggered when participants faced a task-related problem and manifested as an expression of doubt and conflicting ideas or when participants attempted to reach a consensus on seemingly difficult genre analysis aspects.

Implementation of the Second-year course in an Engineering Professional Spine

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Umar Iqbal ◽  
Deena Salem ◽  
David Strong
Keyword(s):  
Learning Outcomes ◽  
Research University ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Employability Skills ◽  
First Year ◽  
Computer Engineering ◽  
Core Courses ◽  
Second Year ◽  
First Time ◽  
Academic Year

The objective of this paper is to document the experience of developing and implementing a second-year course in an engineering professional spine that was developed in a first-tier research university and relies on project-based core courses. The main objective of this spine is to develop the students’ cognitive and employability skills that will allow them to stand out from the crowd of other engineering graduates.The spine was developed and delivered for the first time in the academic year 2010-2011 for first-year general engineering students. In the year 2011-2012, those students joined different programs, and accordingly the second-year course was tailored to align with the different programs’ learning outcomes. This paper discusses the development and implementation of the course in the Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) department.

scholarly journals GENRE ANALYSIS OF RESEARCH ABSTRACTS IN CENTRAL MINDANAO UNIVERSITY

2019 ◽  
pp. 225-236
Author(s):  
Rene Marquez Bonifacio
Keyword(s):  
Content Analysis ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Random Sampling ◽  
Research Abstract ◽  
Genre Analysis ◽  
Stratified Random Sampling ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
Research Article ◽  
Writing Research ◽  
Academic Year

Research abstract provides a summary of a completed research article. This study aims to classify the pattern of the rhetorical moves, identify the obligatory and optional moves, and determine the linguistic features in the research abstracts of Central Mindanao University (CMU) undergraduate students. The study used content analysis and stratified random sampling. The corpora were the research abstracts written by the CMU undergraduate students in the Academic Year (AY) 2011-2015 using Genre-based Approach and Hyland’s Framework for Abstract Analysis (2000). The study reveals that the M2-M3-M4-M5 (purpose-method-product-conclusion) pattern obtained the highest number of occurrences with 159 or 50.96%. Purpose (M2), method (M3), and product (M4) are considered as the obligatory moves because these moves appeared in all of the samples. Various linguistic features are also found. The variations of the rhetorical move patterns, diverse optional moves, and distinctive linguistic features imply that the CMU undergraduate students are unaware of the genre of writing research abstracts.

scholarly journals Technical Report Writing in Engineering Studies

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Teh Zanariah Mohd. Raus ◽  
Mariana Yusoff ◽  
B. Subatira
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Students ◽  
Analysis Approach ◽  
Genre Analysis ◽  
Computer Engineering ◽  
Generic Structure ◽  
Report Writing ◽  
Engineering Community ◽  
Future Career ◽  
Engineering Studies ◽  
Technical Report

Technical reports are very important in engineering domain, as they are the main genre in reporting and communicating information among members in an engineering community. In addition, the engineering students need to be competent in writing technical report because an effective technical report will determine them in being hired and being promoted in their future career. A set of questionnaires was distributed to sixty undergraduates from the Faculty of Electronics and Computer Engineering, Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka (UTeM) to seek the engineering students’ knowledge on technical report writing. Additionally, samples of students’ technical report writing were analysed by using the Genre Analysis approach for technical report writing (Cheung & Lai, 1997) to identify the Move Structure involved in writing technical report. The findings indicated that the students have already obtained the knowledge of generic structure in report genre and five Move Structure were identified in technical report writing. This study has recommended the ESP practitioners to use the genre-based approach in teaching technical report writing to the students as it allows them to have better understanding on how the technical reports were structured and organised.

scholarly journals Emotional Intelligence and Undergraduate Engineering Students

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Skipper ◽  
Lindsay Greenlee ◽  
Jannette Finch ◽  
Kaitlin Marley
Keyword(s):  
Emotional Intelligence ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Work Experience ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Demographic Data ◽  
Multidisciplinary Teams ◽  
Computer Engineering ◽  
Senior Year ◽  
Undergraduate Engineering ◽  
The Impact

Engineers in construction and manufacturing are expected to be able to work with and lead diverse, multidisciplinary teams. Engineering students entering the workforce must be not only technically competent, but also possess skills in working with other people. These traits are frequently lacking with newly graduated engineering students due to the highly technical focus of their curriculum. The opportunity to develop Emotional Intelligence skills is limited. This research proposed that Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) undergraduate students may possess a higher level of Emotional Intelligence than Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) undergraduate students. The research also proposed that if differences were observed, that causal influences could be identified. Undergraduate engineering students at The Citadel completed The TalentSmart Emotional Intelligence Appraisal® along with demographic data and a variety of questions regarding their undergraduate experience. This research included freshman and senior students in Civil and Environmental (CEE) and Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at The Citadel. These surveys suggested that undergraduate engineering students increase their EI score as they advance from Freshman to Senior year. The surveys also suggest that Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) Majors do not advance in their EI scores from Freshman to Senior year as well as Civil and Environmental (CEE) majors. A positive connection was established between work experience and the impact on higher levels of EI. A positive correlation for growth in EI score was also demonstrated for students who attended high schools with smaller graduating classes. Based on the results of this research, the paper proposes CEE and ECE faculty place increased emphasis on encouraging students to pursue summer jobs, internships, and similar extracurricular programs. Both CEE and ECE faculty should evaluate their curriculum with an eye towards inculcating learning opportunities for EI into course work. Additionally, faculty and admission officials should give at least equal consideration to admitting students who graduate from smaller schools that may offer less college prep courses that may appeal to admissions officials

Building Inclusive Undergraduate Teams

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ryan Barr ◽  
Claire Pfeiffer ◽  
Heather Dillon ◽  
Timothy Doughty
Keyword(s):  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Engineering Ethics ◽  
Study Groups ◽  
Project Teams ◽  
Engineering Curriculum ◽  
Engineering Student ◽  
Student Teams ◽  
Survey Results ◽  
Second Year

This paper describes a research project to encourage and enhance formation of undergraduate project teams with a focus on inclusivity. The project was developed by a team of undergraduate students working with a pair of engineering faculty. A survey including questions about team study groups was prepared and used to gather data about how engineering student teams are formed and how students perceive teams at different points as they progress through the curriculum. Interviews with junior/senior level students were filmed and the footage was used to build a composite video to serve as motivation to first and second year students. The video was presented in a second year dynamics class and the students were surveyed to understand the effectiveness of the intervention. The survey results indicate that nearly half of all junior/senior engineering students feel ethically charged to include other students in a study group, while only 32% of second year students feel ethically charged. This research is part of a larger effort to develop methods for merging engineering ethics and professionalism in the mechanical engineering curriculum.

scholarly journals ENGINEERING UNDERGRADUATES AND THEIR SELF-REPORTED CONFIDENCE AND PROFICIENCY LEVELS IN LIFELONG LEARNING (A12)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathryn Marcynuk ◽  
Anne Parker ◽  
Norma Godavari
Keyword(s):  
Lifelong Learning ◽  
Communication Skills ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Technical Information ◽  
Skills Development ◽  
Computer Engineering ◽  
Learning Skills ◽  
Second Year ◽  
Personal Skills ◽  
Competency Level

This paper reports on what we found when we surveyed second-year students in a Technical Communication class, once at the beginning of the semester and again at the end, and then when we surveyed two senior capstone design classes, one in Mechanical Engineering, one in Electrical and Computer Engineering, and one in Civil Engineering. In all these iterations, we asked students to indicate their levels of confidence and proficiency in their writing and speaking skills (communication skills), teamwork and personal skills development (lifelong learning). When we surveyed our second-year students, they indicated that they were only moderately confident in their communication skills (the aggregate was mostly 3 or slightly more on a scale of 5). At the end of the semester, when we asked them what they believed would be the competency level expected of them in these areas when they graduated, that number jumped to 4.5 on average. These students, however, were also decidedly more confident in their teamwork and lifelong learning skills, where the average hovered close to 3.5. On average, the capstone students were likewise confident in these areas, even slightly more so (3.87).  Given the rapidity with which technical information grows and the complexity of the world around us, engineering students must be more prepared than ever to develop the drive to keep learning so that, as practicing professionals, they are equipped to maintain their competence and contribute to the advancement of knowledge. 

Analytical Study of Violence Theme in Victoria Schwab’s This Savage Song

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Analytical Study ◽  
Research Paper ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Vicious Cycle ◽  
Aggressive Approach ◽  
Research Article ◽  
The People ◽  
The Social ◽  
Different Dimensions ◽  
The Right

This research article focuses on the theme of violence and its representation by the characters of the novel “This Savage Song” by Victoria Schwab. How violence is transmitted through genes to next generations and to what extent socio- psycho factors are involved in it, has also been discussed. Similarly, in what manner violent events and deeds by the parents affect the psychology of children and how it inculcates aggressive behaviour in their minds has been studied. What role is played by the parents in grooming the personality of children and ultimately their decisions to choose the right or wrong way has been argued. In the light of the theory of Judith Harris, this research paper highlights all the phenomena involved: How the social hierarchy controls the behaviour. In addition, the aggressive approach of the people in their lives has been analyzed in the light of the study of second theorist Thomas W Blume. As the novel is a unique representation of supernatural characters, the monsters, which are the products of some cruel deeds, this research paper brings out different dimensions of human sufferings with respect to these supernatural beings. Moreover, the researcher also discusses that, in what manner the curse of violence creates an inevitable vicious cycle of cruel monsters that makes the life of the characters turbulent and miserable.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document