An investigation into interdisciplinary team teaching in writing and engineering: A multi-year study

The Sophomore Engineering Clinic I is the third course in an 8-semester multidisciplinary engineering practice and design sequence taken by all engineering students at Rowan University. This course is taught jointly by a team of faculty from the College of Communications and all four departments within the College of Engineering. The Sophomore Clinic students receive classroom training in technical communication and in the engineering design process, and work on design projects in multidisciplinary teams of 3-4 students. This paper presents the second year results of an on-going experiment involving the integration of technical writing and engineering design in Sophomore Engineering Clinic I. The highlights of this experiment include: 1) Comparing sections which are jointly taught by engineering and writing faculty with sections solely taught by writing faculty, 2) Tracking the effectiveness of increasing active engineering faculty participation in writing instruction over multiple semesters, and 3) Fully integrating engineering design and communication deliverables and grading. Time series data from student surveys and faculty assessments are analyzed to investigate the effectiveness of the integrated teaching efforts. In addition, the nature, quality, and definitions of the interdisciplinary team teaching as seen from the perspective of the professors and the students are assessed. The results of this on-going study show that rectifying student misconceptions on the duality of engineering and writing requires active interdisciplinary team teaching efforts and full integration across all course aspects.