Moodie et al., Improving written communication skills of students by providing effective feedback on laboratory reports Proceedings of the 2007 AaeE Conference, Melbourne, Copyright © Moodie, Brammer and Hessami, 2007 1 Improving written communication skills of students by providing effective feedback on laboratory reports Jane Moodie Monash University, Melbourne, Australia jane.moodie@eng.monash.edu.au Naomi Brammer Monash University, Melbourne, Australia naomi.brammer@eng.monash.edu.au Mir-Akbar Hessami Monash University, Melbourne, Australia akbar.hessami@eng.monash.edu.au Abstract: An important and sometimes overlooked opportunity to develop the written communication skills of Engineering students exists in laboratory subjects where students write a number of laboratory reports. This paper describes an improved approach to teaching the writing of laboratory reports which focuses on providing more effective feedback on student reports. Comprehensive report writing guidelines, clear assessment criteria and a detailed marking scheme were devised and then used as the basis of teaching report writing and of providing systematic effective feedback on reports. Comparison of the quality of reports submitted before and after the introduction of the approach suggests that this approach is successful in improving the written communication skills of students. The use of detailed assessment criteria also simplifies the marking process for demonstrators and ensures that expectations and feedback remain consistent among demonstrators. Introduction While there is a widely recognised need for the development of the written and oral communication skills of undergraduate Engineering students, it can seem difficult to find room in the already crowded technical curriculum to include the teaching of these vital skills. Different ways of integrating the teaching of these skills into the engineering curriculum have been investigated (e.g., Borthwick, 1994; Marsh and Tomlinson, 1994; Clinch and Goulter, 1992), including in laboratory-based subjects (e.g., Hessami and Sillitoe, 1997; Silyn-Roberts, 1993). In these subjects, the students are required to present and discuss the results of experiments in formal laboratory reports, and thus there is an excellent opportunity in these subjects to incorporate some development of the students’ writing skills. Fundamental to the learning of writing skills is a clear understanding of the requirements of the writing task. Students need to understand exactly what they are expected to produce in order to write well. Thus, detailed guidelines are necessary. Given that students have been writing laboratory reports since senior secondary school, it is often assumed that they already have this understanding of the requirements of good reports. For example, it is assumed that the students will know what to write in the discussion and how to write effective conclusions. However, students often write reports of poor quality or reports that could be significantly better in a number of aspects. Also fundamental to the learning of writing skills is the use of effective feedback so that students can improve their writing. Ideally, students are required to write a number of reports as formative assessment tasks during the course of a subject so that there is the opportunity for them to receive