ENHANCING LEARNING AND WRITING OF LABORATORY REPORTS IN MATERIALS SCIENCE FOR FIRST YEAR UNDERGRADUATE LEARNERS

The importance of writing competence of engineering learners is emphasized by the Engineering Council of South Africa (ECSA). This directed the current research to investigate how to enhance learners’ experiences in engineering programmes to eventually achieve this requirement. The council requires new Engineering programmes to include a generic exit level outcome regarding professional and technical communication that summative assesses the ability of learners to communicate effectively to discipline-specific audiences while engaging with different kinds of texts, such as technical reports, proposals and presentations.

A study was undertaken to investigate learners’ knowledge’s, practices, beliefs and experiences regarding laboratory report writing by implementation of two questionnaires administered before and after a laboratory report writing process. A theoretical framework developed by Ivanǐc was used to analize the learners’ responses to identify discourses of learners’ approaches to writing. A class of 124 registered learners were requested to participate in the questionnaires of which only 84 responded. Participants demonstrated their writing and learning beliefs to be a predominant skills discourse with minor indication of process and social discourses. The implication for teaching is that learners need to understand that writing is much more than a skills approach. Learners need to be assisted to develop comprehensive discourses(e.g. process, genre, social practices, identity) surrounding learning of literacies, in particular writing of laboratory reports, to enable learners to experience and implement a holistic approach to writing laboratory reports.