Evaluating the Writing (Instructor's Perspective)
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Teaching Resources Writing Guidelines Writing Exercises Writing Courses
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Grading someone's engineering writing is challenging because there are so many variables that you can consider: what the message is (the content); how the message is presented to the readers (the style, which comprises the structure, language, and illustration); and the form of the message (format, grammar, punctuation, usage, and spelling). Table 1 shows a realistic way to evaluate the style and form of engineering and scientific reports (in this scheme, a separate grade is given for content). In this breakdown, students earn points for successes in style (structure, language, and illustration), but stand to lose points for errors in form (format, grammar, punctuation, usage, and spelling). This scheme mimics the way that readers assess reports because readers generally notice style when there are successes (reflected by the positive scoring), but do not notice form unless there are errors (reflected by the negative scoring). This breakdown is used in a large design course (about 200 students) in Electrical and Computer Engineering at Virginia Tech. The raw numerical score translates to a standard 100-point scale in the following way:
As part of the evaluation process, the students receive marks on their papers. The system for marking papers is designed in such a way that the students learn from the marks. For marks to be effective, they first must be clear. The students must also understand what the weaknesses or strengths are. Moreover, because an evaluated paper usually has several marks on it, a challenge is to assign a hierarchy to those marks so that the students understand what the most important weaknesses or strengths are. The method used consists of two aspects for marking papers. The first is a clearly defined set of editing marks, similar to the ones that copy editors use. The second aspect of the marking process is a summary at the paper's end that highlights the major strengths and weaknesses. The summary may be an abbreviated form of Table 1 (without the page or chapter numbers) or a listing of the major strengths (one column with plus signs) and the major weaknesses (a second column with minus signs).
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Table 1. Breakdown for Evaluation of Communication.
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Last updated 7/00 http://www.me.vt.edu/writing/handbook/ You are more than welcome to use these materials in your classroom as long as you acknowledge the source.
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