Workshop: Improving research and writing skills in Engineering Education

The growth of engineering education as an academic field is linked to research development, which in turn requires research and academic writing skills. These two dimensions become visible in the production of academic genres related to the dissemination of research: thesis, research report, conference paper and academic article. They all follow the sequence of the scientific method but differ in their rhetorical styles, which must be known to match the expected requirements in each case. This paper presents a didactical approach to achieve these goals by both students and practitioners as implemented in an EDUNINE 2021 Conference workshop. This circumstance offers an ideal setting for an active and collaborative learning, peer-review and group discussion.

I. Introduction

Since the publication of Borrego's work “Conceptual difficulties experienced by trained engineers learning educational research methods” [1] in 2007, there has been a concern about the conceptual hurdles for the new generation of engineering education researchers that still exist [2]. The growth of engineering education as an academic field is linked to research development, which in turn requires specific research skills and academic writing proficiency. Among the former, the Research Skills Development Framework (RSD) by Willison & O'Regan [3], of the University of Adelaide, Australia, may be mentioned. It states that student: •

embark on inquiry and so determine a need for knowledge/understanding;

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find/generate needed information/ data using appropriate methodology;

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critically evaluate information/data and the process to find/generate them;

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organise information collected/generated;

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synthesize and analyze new knowledge;

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communicate knowledge and understanding and the processes used to generate them.