Published

2016-09-01

Effects of an educational intervention on the technical writing competence of engineering students

Efectos de una intervención educativa en la competencia de escritura téc-nica de estudiantes de ingeniería

Keywords:

Information literacy skills of engineering students, information documentation, engineering technical writing, writing across the curriculum, engineering education (en)
Habilidades para el manejo de la información de estudiantes de ingeniería, documentación de la información, escritura técnica de los ingenieros, escritura a través del currículo, educación en ingeniería. (es)

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Authors

  • J. J. Ramírez-Echeverry Associate Professor, Universidad Nacional de Colombia – Bogotá.
  • F. A. Olarte Dussán Assistant Professor, Universidad Nacional de Colombia – Bogotá.
  • A. García-Carrillo Researcher of Departamento de Proyectos de Ingeniería, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), Spain

This article presents the design, implementation and appraisal of an educational intervention developed to explore how education, practice and feedback of cognitive elements, regarding writing summaries, have an effect on the technical writing competence of freshman engineering students. The educational intervention was designed based on the methodol-ogy of Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) and it consisted of three phases: teaching, practice and feedback. In total, 177 students participated, distributed into three groups: 54 Electronic Engineering students (year 2014), 57 Electrical Engineering students (year 2015) and 66 Electronic Engineering students (year 2015). The intervention effects were studied by quantitative and qualitative evidence. Quantitative evidence was collected through an evaluation rubric of the summaries written by the students; this rubric analyzes ten criteria of the writing competence. Qualitative evidence was collected through open-ended questions about the students’ learning experience throughout the intervention. Results show that the three partici-pating groups improved their technical writing competence due to their participation in this educational intervention. Sen-tence construction (g-Hedges = 0,62) and text sequences (g-Hedges = 0,59) criterion presented the highest effect rates. The other writing criteria, evaluated through the rubric, presented a positive gain with statistical significance, but only in some groups of students.

Este artículo presenta el diseño, implementación y evaluación de una intervención educativa para explorar cómo la ins-trucción, práctica y retroalimentación de elementos cognitivos para la escritura de resúmenes impactan la competencia de escritura técnica de una población de estudiantes de primer año de ingeniería. El diseño de la intervención educativa se basó en la metodología de escritura a través del currículo (WAC, en inglés) y se compone de tres fases: instrucción, prác-tica y retroalimentación. En total participaron 177 estudiantes, distribuidos en tres grupos: 54 estudiantes de Ingeniería Elec-trónica (año 2014), 57 estudiantes de Ingeniería Eléctrica (año 2015) y 66 estudiantes de Ingeniería Electrónica (año 2015). Los efectos de la intervención se exploraron con evidencias cuantitativas y cualitativas. Las evidencias cuantitativas se recolectaron con una rúbrica de evaluación de los resúmenes elaborados por los estudiantes; dicha rúbrica analiza diez indicadores de desempeño para la competencia de escritura. Las evidencias cualitativas se recopilaron con preguntas de respuesta abierta que interrogaban a los estudiantes sobre la experiencia de aprendizaje vivenciada en la intervención. Los resultados indican que los tres grupos de estudiantes participantes mejoraron su competencia de escritura técnica. Los mayores tamaños de efecto de la intervención los presentaron los indicadores construcción de oraciones (g-Hedges = 0,62) y secuencialidad del texto (g-Hedges = 0,59). Los demás indicadores de escritura, evaluados con la rúbrica, presentaron ganancia positiva con significancia estadística, pero sólo en alguno(s) de los grupos de estudiantes participantes.

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Copyright (c) 2016 J. J. Ramírez-Echeverry, F. A. Olarte Dussán, A. García-Carrillo

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