Effectiveness of Checklists in Developing Technical Writing Skills

Abstract

The development of communicative competences is crucial for engineering graduates [1-2]. To address this essential aspect of education, various efforts have been undertaken, including the creation of assessment rubrics for written and oral communication [2-4]. Rubrics serve as a tool to convey expectations regarding student work. Beyond their use in evaluating submissions, rubrics are also provided to students in advance to clarify the qualities expected in their work. However, we have found that rubrics alone do not guarantee the inclusion of all important components expected from students.This work-in-progress abstract presents a study conducted at an R1-university in the mid-Atlantic region of the United States to explore the effectiveness of use of structured checklists in enhancing technical writing skills among undergraduate students in an upper-level laboratory course. Recognizing that clear and effective communication is vital, we developed the checklist for this study that aligned with the rubrics to guide students through the essential components of lab report writing. We collected baseline lab reports from last year, prior to the introduction of the checklist, and compared them with reports submitted this semester after its implementation. Preliminary results indicate a positive correlation between the use of the checklist and improvements in key technical writing dimensions, including clarity, structure, and data presentation. Additionally, student reflection and feedback gathered through surveys suggests that the checklist helped facilitate better organization of thoughts and enhanced their understanding of report expectations. We also plan to include a comparison of inter-rater reliability for the evaluation of the lab reports.