Michael Alley, Penn State and Virginia Tech
Writing as an Engineer or Scientist
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.
Format Templates
Memo Report Format (Forthcoming)
Model Student Report: Short Format
(Penn State)
Model Student Report: Long Format
(Penn State)
Model Student Report: Memo Report Format
(Virginia Tech)
Instructor Links
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