Teaching the kinds of topics outlined in the second half of Explaining the Future can be difficult in an engineering context, especially with large classes. To improve, students need detailed feedback so that they can improve the next time. That takes time, energy, and money. At the IEEE Professional Communication (ProComm) conference in Aachen in July, I presented a paper on this to help other teachers to think about how to go about designing rich, meaningful writing assignments in a practical way. As a result of my experiences at ProComm, I decided it made sense to set up a resource to help teachers of science and engineering students to teach writing.
I don’t want to share this resource publicly on the web until it’s better populated, but if you are interested in design and marking strategies, tried-and-tested assignments, rubrics, and more, just send me a quick e-mail and I’ll give you the password to access the material that’s there right now.