The book offers a range of plans including a 32-week plan to craft chapter-length literature reviews for a dissertation, a 16-week plan for those more time-crunched or experienced, an 8-week plan for the “highly motivated” or those with shorter literature review requirements such as for a conference paper, and finally two-week and one-week plans for the truly desperate. Activities in each chapter take the writer step-by-step through the process of preparing the review for evaluation by an advisor. The book is further divided into 12 chapters, the last of which is geared more toward advisors and writing instructors. This book fills a long-standing gap in resources for novice research writers. Too often, graduate students receive feedback on only grammar and punctuation issues—surface concerns—rather than the structure and clarity of their narratives. Berdanier and Lenart provide a step-by-step guide for graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, and new graduate advisors in writing effective, impactful literature reviews, the backbone of journal articles that get cited and grant proposals that get funded. Not to be overlooked, though, are writing center coaches, who often see engineering students and faculty in their sessions but may not have the background to feel comfortable providing guidance on such projects. At a minimum, this book is a must-have for engineering graduate students seeking a path through one of the more challenging writing tasks early in their careers.

The Covid-19 pandemic brought momentous changes to higher education regarding how students attend classes and how faculty teach. While the effects of these changes will be evaluated and debated for some time, this past year has shown that technology can help build connections between students in the virtual classroom. This short paper will reflect on existing research regarding virtual classroom practices and build on that work by demonstrating how breakout rooms were used in two graduate engineering communication courses to facilitate collaboration and build relationships between students from diverse backgrounds and locations.

Hands-on lab experiences are essential for enabling students to be successful engineers, especially those who identify as kinesthetic learners. This case study describes how a Mechanical Engineering Practice course sequence was redesigned during the COVID-19 emergency transition to remote learning and examines how students responded to these changes. The remote course included videos of Graduate Teaching Assistants conducting data acquisition phases of the practice session to replace hands-on experiments. To understand student perspectives and performance, researchers reviewed approximately 400 reflective essays from Spring 2020, and compared assignment submissions between Fall 2019 and Spring 2020. Results suggest that some students perceived the loss of hands-on activities as detrimental to their learning and it was not comparable to face-to-face counterparts. Furthermore, students felt forced to develop self-directed learning skills. However, in contrast to student comments in reflective essays, comparisons of assignment submissions suggested that students in Spring 2020 did not receive lower grades or have a reduced demonstration of conceptual knowledge obtained in the course.

Introduction: The COVID-19 pandemic brought unprecedented challenges to universities when instruction had to shift entirely online. Universities were quick to survey their students about those challenges, and education researchers are now focused on building more effective online experiences based on student feedback. About the case: The loss of in-person instruction was difficult for engineering students in practice-based courses as they lost the courses' hands-on aspect, which is essential for reinforcing theoretical concepts. They also lost the support provided through daily interactions with their peers and instructors. Situating the case: Students in a required four-course practice-based mechanical engineering sequence shared their perspectives via reflective portfolio essays on how shifting to online instruction affected their ability to participate in their learning communities and negotiate meaningful learning experiences. Methods/approach: Through thematic analysis of the reflective essays, we applied the lens of communities of practice to put the students' responses into context. Results/discussion: The students' concerns varied depending on their position in the course sequence and the course; however, most students felt that the loss of in-person interaction was most detrimental and disruptive in the transition to online instruction and yielded communication and teaming issues. Implications and conclusions: Five implications arose from the results of this study, including recognizing the unique challenges of online learning in practice-based courses, instructing students in virtual communication tools, exercising empathy, being mindful of cognitive load, and researching self-directed learners in online environments. In addition, faculty should consider the importance of students' communities of practice and build opportunities to maintain and strengthen the bonds of those communities within their courses, both online and face to face. They should also add more opportunities for virtual interaction early in the curriculum to build digital communication skills, which will undoubtedly be required in their careers.

Graduate students in engineering programs have diverse needs depending on their past experiences and future career goals. Many universities invest their limited resources in assisting non-native speakers of English in preparing scholarly papers. Such programs may ignore the needs of domestic students lacking adequate communication preparation as well as students uninterested in academic career paths. A broader approach is warranted to better assist all students to develop higher-level communication skills. This paper describes a two-course sequence in one graduate engineering program that addresses the unique needs of students interested in both industry career paths and academia, regardless of language background. One course prepares students for communicating persuasively and collaboratively in business environments, while the second course is focused on the traditional research genres of journal papers, conference presentations, and grant proposals. Both courses also include a significant emphasis on ethical decision making in business and research situations. Early indications from students are that the courses meet their needs in helping them communicate more effectively as engineers and/or scholars.

An ability to work well in a team is one professional skill employers say is vital to success for recent college graduates. However, while much research has explored aspects of team dynamics, few studies have explored the ways in which students develop interpersonal and teaming skills during their undergraduate career. This paper presents case studies for three students from a twenty-six-student research study. Using qualitative tools such as thematic analysis and text-driven content analysis, each case explores a different issue routinely experienced in undergraduate engineering design teams - diligent isolation, social loafing, and potential gender bias. This research will be of interest to faculty who teach and/or study team communication, especially in engineering programs. A possible application of this research is to design curricular materials that place teaming instruction earlier in a degree program and develop more frequent and effective accountability milestones related to teaming and leadership in capstone courses.

To solve the professional challenges they will face upon graduation, mechanical engineering (ME) graduates must be able to ask the right questions, think critically, and communicate their ideas effectively. Traditionally, the ME curriculum has relied on design courses, especially capstone design, to achieve these objectives. This brief paper will describe a new approach developed within a small public research university's large (1,400+) undergraduate ME program in which faculty worked with the department's communications program director to embed technical communication instruction in at least four new required courses. The new curriculum combines applied learning and project-based learning methods in a series of four Mechanical Engineering Practice courses. Technical communication instruction is embedded in these courses via sixteen communication modules, enabling students to learn best practices in written, oral, and visual communication, apply those practices to their individual and team assignments, and receive formative feedback to improve future work. Preliminary feedback from students and departmental faculty has been positive; however, other programs interested in adopting such an approach will need to consider availability of grading resources and structure content to meet the unique needs of the student population and other constituents.

To modernize the curriculum and the skills taught to our Mechanical Engineering students at Michigan Technological University, a curriculum revision process began in 2010, and the first new courses were implemented in fall 2014.The first class has been taught successfully in Fall 2014, Spring, Summer and Fall 2015 semesters.This paper describes the success and challenges in implementation and running of the first of four ME-Practice classes replacing all traditional lab classes as part of a curriculum revision.The real course content planning started in summer 2013 with the finalization of the detailed definition of learning goals and identification of possible practice session experiments (not labs) that accomplish the learning goals in a particular sequence (scaffolding knowledge).Software packages were chosen and coordinated for use in the curriculum to minimize the students having to learn more software packages than needed.For the two-credit class, 13 weeks of materials were created that cover safety training and writing instruction, data acquisition, reverse engineering of a consumer product and manufacturing techniques, tension and bending testing to determine material properties, multi-domain system modeling software and application in an elevator system test and model validation, introduction to control systems, finite element modeling of truss structures, a bridge experiment, design of a new truss element given engineering requirements and 3D printing and testing of the new truss element, concluding with learning about G-code for lathes and manufacturing of an aluminum chess piece.Supplies were ordered and user manuals as well as practice session instructions were written.The assignments, quizzes, and practice sessions were then designed to mimic real world scenarios as were weekly deliverables in the form of individual or group reports to a supervisor within the context of the scenario (e.g.you are an engineer working for company x to reverse engineer a product of company y).The assignments were set up in such a way that each individual student learns each of the skills first, reports on them one week, and then applies them to follow-up assignments in group settings the next week(s).Templates were constructed and grading rubrics implemented to coordinate and standardize all documents and grading.A course template with all documents and assignments was set up in a course management system to facilitate uniform class delivery to all sections.In Fall 2014, approximately 180 students took the course followed by another 120 in Spring 2015 and 9 in the Summer 2015.In fall 2015, 265 students were enrolled in the class followed by 92 in Spring 2016.The student evaluations and feedback has overall been positive but the logistics have posed challenges related to the volume of students.Most all challenges have been solved, with continuous improvement now the focus of the teaching team.Training teaching assistants and faculty is ongoing to improve uniformity in grading and quality of feedback to the students.

Background Active learning techniques have proven effective at engaging students in course content and fostering deeper learning, as compared with traditional lecture techniques. Additionally, research has shown that one of the best ways to teach professional skills such as communication is within disciplinary courses; this strategy makes the material more relevant to students' career goals. This paper will explore the first phase of a multi-year study on the use of an active learning approach called student-centered learning to build communication skills in a graduate-level nanotechnology course offered in a department of mechanical engineering. In the course, students develop presentations as a means of understanding current trends, emerging research topics, relevant applications, and fundamental science and technology concepts related to nanotechnology. Motivation The aim of this research is to determine the efficacy of peer presentations in a graduate-level engineering course as a means to more effectively engage students with course concepts while providing opportunities to practice critical thinking and presentation skills Methodology Using thematic analysis, we analyzed student responses to five open-ended questions as part of a seven-question survey given twice at the end of the spring 2019 and fall 2019 semesters. Results Peer presentations can guide students in developing and articulating their own, novel interpretation of the learning materials. Guided reflection further engages students with the material by "forcing" them to pay close attention to the presenter to answer the questions. Conclusions The results of this research thus far point to student-centered learning as an effective means of teaching critical reading and presentation skills. However, the variation in perceptions between predominantly undergraduate and predominantly graduate course enrollment indicates a need for deeper inquiry into the ways academic maturity affects those participants.

Beyond first-year composition, the undergraduate mechanical engineering curriculum provides few opportunities for students to develop technical writing skills. One underutilized path for students to strengthen those skills is the required sequence of laboratory courses, where students write reports that are evaluated by graduate teaching assistants (GTAs), many of whom speak English as a second language. Historically, engineering GTAs have not been trained in formative assessment techniques to help students improve their technical writing skills. This dissertation details a comprehensive study of a GTA training program implemented in a large mechanical engineering department. Situated within the field of Writing Across the Curriculum/Writing in the Disciplines, the program was developed to meet the unique needs of the department’s GTAs and address perceived deficiencies in undergraduate student writing by teaching best practices in writing evaluation. Two methods were used to assess the efficacy of this program: 1) Qualitative methods such as interviews and an open-ended survey were used to gain the perspective of the GTAs and their students on a variety of issues; and 2) A summative assessment compared Senior Capstone Design final reports completed prior to the program’s implementation to reports completed three years later to gauge improvement in clarity and concision. This research is relevant to engineering programs seeking to improve the communication skills of their undergraduate students. The program used limited staff/faculty resources to extend the knowledge and skills of its GTAs and reach all its undergraduate students through existing required courses.