{"doi":"10.18260/1-2--34651","title":"Exposing First-year Engineering Students to Research-based Technical Communication Through the Use of a Nanotech Project","abstract":"This complete evidence-based practice paper will explore a first-year engineering (FYE) course that includes an eight-week-long project involving various technical communication components. First-year engineering programs have increased in popularity over the past decade in engineering, primarily due to their success in introducing undergraduate engineering students to engineering experiences. Although the content and structure of these FYE courses vary from institution to institution, their purposes remain the same: To prepare engineering students for their engineering education experience, as well as future engineering positions. Popular content choices for a FYE course include engineering design, mathematics, design/programming software, and technical writing. Of all these content areas listed above, technical writing is arguably one of the most difficult. Many students come into their collegiate engineering experience formally writing only for English classes, and have a hard time adjusting to writing technically when they are asked to write about engineering assignments, labs, or projects. This paper will outline a FYE course that includes an eight-week-long project involving multiple technical communication components. This course is the second in a FYE sequence that emphasizes the importance of technical writing. In the first course of the FYE sequence, students are taught to write either a lab report, memo, or abstract over labs that they complete on a weekly basis. In the second course of the sequence, students are exposed to different types of technical communication. To complement their research project, students are asked to read assigned journal articles related to the research project, as well as find journal articles of interest and present them to the class in groups. The final deliverables of their projects include a grant proposal, a journal article, a technical presentation and a research poster. The goal of this course's project is to expand students' exposure to and experience with technical writing beyond lab reports and abstracts, and push them to engage with other forms of communicating technical research.","journal":"2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access Proceedings","year":2020,"id":127943,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":1,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9577,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2020-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":578206,"name":"Tara Wilson","orcid":null,"position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":577642,"name":"Alexander Egyed","orcid":"0000-0003-3128-5427","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":578207,"name":"Olivia Vick","orcid":null,"position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":577643,"name":"Michael R. Parke","orcid":"0000-0001-6345-5182","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":577641,"name":"Cassie Wallwey","orcid":"0000-0003-1318-1843","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":12,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:15:34.966380Z","pmid":null,"pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}