Instructor's Page:
Online Class Period on Writing Reports

Description of Class Period

Our tutorial on writing reports was developed to put engineering and science students in position to succeed in their report assignments for engineering and science courses. This tutorial targets students in technical courses such as engineering design or chemistry laboratory. For such students, instructors often have only one class period to devote to the writing of reports. To be efficient, the class period focuses on the most important differences between scientific writing (which many such students have not yet formally studied) and general writing (for which the students have taken several courses in their education). Note that this website uses scientific writing, engineering writing, and technical writing as interchangeable terms.

Objectives of Class Period

  1. Persuade students that writing is an important skill in their engineering or scientific career
  2. Show engineering and science students the importance of analyzing audience, purpose, and occasion before writing a report
  3. Dispel common misconceptions about the structure, language, and illustrations of technical reports
  4. Put students (or student teams) in a position to do well on their next technical or scientific report.

Online Class Period

For the online class period, students should do the following:
  1. View the films of the Tutorial for Writing Reports in Engineering and Science.
  2. Take a comprehension quiz posted on the course's online platform (instructors are welcome to use questions given on this page)
  3. Analyze the audience, purpose, and occasion of their next technical report
  4. Craft an outline for their next technical report
  5. Optional: If the format is not fixed, download a report template that would be appropriate.

Teaching Slides for Follow-Up Class Period

If a live class period or zoom class period is available, you might consider using the following instructor slides, which pose and answer questions from the tutorial. When I show these slides, I call on specific students to answer the easier questions (the ones directly discussed in the tutorial). For the more difficult questions, I pose the questions to the class. For "yes or no" or multiple choice questions, I have students raise their hands.  
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Possible Questions for Comprehension Quiz

  1. After you identify the content that needs to be communicated, the tutorial recommends what as the next step in the writing process?a) Write an outline
    b) Write a working title
    c) Write a summary
    d) Write an introduction
    e) Analyze the constraints of audience, purpose, and occasion
  2. True or False: A single style of writing exists for all technical documents. 
  3. True or False: The title of a technical document should be "short and sweet."
  4. True or False: Every detail in the summary of a technical document should appear in at least that much detail in the main text of the document.
  5. The tutorial defines what as the most important goal(s) of scientific writing?
    a) being concise
    b) pleasing sound ("it don't mean a thing, if it ain't got that swing")
    c) being concise, but melodic
    d) being precise and clear
    e) being "short and sweet"
  6. True or False: In technical writing, when you want the meaning of "because," you should choose the word because rather than the word as, because the word because has only one meaning. 
  7. True or False: In technical writing, you should not place a comma after an introductory phrase or clause because commas are on their way out in modern writing.
  8. True or False: In technical writing, rather than placing a noun after the word this, you should let the word this stand alone to reduce the number of words in your writing. 
  9. True or False: In technical reports, as soon as you mention an illustration, you should break the paragraph, insert the illustration, and then continue the paragraph below.
  10. True or False: In engineering and science, an equation is not only a part of the paragraph but grammatically part of the sentence that introduces it.
Answers: 1(e); 2(F); 3(F); 4(T); 5(d); 6(T); 7(F); 8(F); 9(F); 10(T)

References

  1. Alley, Michael, The Craft of Scientific Writing, 4th ed. (New York: Springer Verlag, 2018).
  2. Bernstein, Theodore, The Careful Writer (New York: Free Press, 1995).​​
  3. William A. Sabin, The Gregg Reference Manual: A Manual of Style, Grammar, Usage, and Formatting, 11th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2010).
Sponsors
     Leonhard Center, College of Engineering, Penn State
​     National Science Foundation, NSF EAGER Award  1752096

​Content Editor
     Michael Alley, Teaching Professor, College of Engineering, Penn State

Film Editors
     Richelle Weiger, College of Engineering, Penn State
     Casey Fenton, College of Engineering, Penn State
​For the academic year 2019-2020, we are collecting comments, questions, criticisms, and suggestions for the films, text, and quizzes of each lesson on scientific writing. To help us understand your input, would please let us know what your discipline is and whether you are a student, professional, or faculty member?