Improving engineering students’ writing/presentation skills using laboratory/mini-project report

Abstract

Effective learning has many and different disciplines, one of them is the improvement of students’ soft skills which include different abilities, such as presentation, communicating, teamwork, time/project management and effective writing. This paper addresses the improvement of writing skills, particularly when writing a technical laboratory or mini-project report is used. The report should contain all the factors that enhance students’ writing using the appropriate language and conventions. Here, we investigate the students’ performance and response when applying the proposed guidelines and recommendations for the suggested structure of mini-projects or laboratory reports. The analysis contains a discussion of a case study conducted over 12 consecutive terms to assess student performance in four different courses using the proposed report structure. Moreover, it includes a discussion about the students’ response for the questionnaire which explores students’ satisfaction with the assigned lab tasks and proposed structure for five consecutive terms for a specific course, namely electrical machines.