Michael Alley, Penn State and Virginia Tech

Writing as an Engineer or Scientist

Essence of Writing Reports

Badge Tutorial: Writing Engineering Reports


This tutorial presents the essence of writing reports in engineering and science. Targeting engineering and science students who have not yet taken a technical writing course, this tutorial focuses on avoiding the most common stylistic errors that young engineers and scientists make in their laboratory, design, and internship reports. Some errors discussed greatly affect a report's success. Other errors occur so frequently that they warrant discussion. More detailed information for this tutorial can be found throughout The Craft of Scientific Writing (Springer, 2018). To come up with the content for this tutorial, we used the NSF I-Corps process and interviewed more than 100 students and faculty from engineering and science. In addition, we drew from surveys from hundreds of upper-level engineering students.                 

   

Sponsors

Leonhard Center, College of Engineering, Penn State

National Science Foundation, NSF EAGER Award 1752096


Content Editors

Michael Alley, Teaching Professor, College of Engineering, Penn State

Justin Bardy, B.S. in Mechanical Engineering, 2021, Penn State

Alexus Eicher, B.S. in Computer Science, 2020, Penn State

Jake Grant, B.S. in Mechanical Engineering, 2022, Penn State

Alexander How, B.S. in Mechanical Engineering, 2021, Penn State

Roman Pero, B.S. in Chemical Engineering, 2021, Penn State

Kaitlyn Pigeon, B.S. in Industrial Engineering, 2020, Penn State

 
Film Editors

Elaine Gustus, College of Engineering, Penn State

Richelle Weiger, College of Engineering, Penn State

Casey Fenton, College of Engineering, Penn State