Research Writing for Engineers
Writing 50E is an intermediate writing course focused on introducing students in the College of Engineering to the kinds of research and writing they will be doing as a part of their professional lives, especially emphasizing collaborative work and career documents.
After completing Writing 50E, you should be able to:
All course readings will be .pdfs or links, available through this site.
You will need access to our shared Google Drive.
We will be using contract grading in this course. Contract grading avoids the uses of grades and/or numbers on individual assignments. For more information on contract grading and a more granular breakdown of the requirements for grades in the course, see the contract grading page.
Essentially, in this class, your final course letter grade will be determined by your labor: completing assignments and participating in the course. This doesn’t mean that quality of work matters less, as we will regularly discuss the quality of your writing. Rather, we will focus on improving writing through hard work and collaborative efforts (instead of comparing the quality of your work to your classmates or an abstract notion of standards).
When it comes to evaluating writing, my goal is to create opportunities for receiving and providing feedback that will foster your growth as a thinker and writer. That is, we will try to create a class where you, your classmates, and I function as allies and collaborators, rather than adversaries working against each other for grades or approval by teachers. Taking grades out of the class, I hope, will allow you freedom to take risks and really work hard. Taking risks (even if they don’t pay off in our favor) can show us our weaknesses, misunderstandings, and provide opportunities to grow and change.
Furthermore, since I won’t be assigning a number or letter grade to anything and since my feedback will be less frequent than your peers’, this makes your colleagues’ and your own assessment and revision advice all the more valuable. This will help you listen carefully to colleagues’ differing judgments and build self-assessment strategies that function apart from a teacher’s approval. I want you to learn to assess the worth of those judgments for your work and make informed, careful decisions in your writing that you can explain to others. Such assessments will require time and critical thinking.
If you’re looking to game the system and do the least amount of work to get the highest possible course grade, this is not the class for you. If you genuinely want to improve yourself as a writer and reader, are willing to apply effort toward that improvement, and accept the idea that your labor in service of that goal has value, then this is the class for you.
Keeping Up To Speed: The course schedule and assignment prompts are available through our course website at https://writ50e.andmuchmuchmore.com/. Keep in mind, the course schedule is subject to change. You are responsible for regularly checking the schedule for updates. I do my level best to communicate all the logistics of the course (deadlines, updates, changes, procedures) through email and in class. Please, for your sake and mine: check your email and read emails from me completely.
Late Work: While I set deadlines as midnight on the due date, if you turn something in a few hours after midnight, it’s not a big deal. I won’t count things as late until I record completion the next day. Anything longer than that will count as late work. If you are aware beforehand that you will need more time, please get in touch with me! Though I have created deadlines, I am also aiming to be flexible. What I emphasize here is contact: please keep me updated as soon as you can. Do your best to let me know in advance if you anticipate needing extensions or other accommodations so that I can try to work with you.
Respect: Personal insults or attacks on an individual person’s race, class, gender, sexuality, or disability will not be tolerated. In other words, be courteous and respectful to those around you.
Academic Integrity: Two key features of academic integrity are honesty and truthful representation of self. My assumption is that work you submit is your own original work — that is, produced by you, and for this class. You should identify any of your work which is collaborative with others, or which is borrowed from others, or which is your own work from other contexts. In other words, you should credit others’ contributions to your work. You should not claim to have written any writing that is not your own. To do so is considered plagiarism, a serious violation of the principle of academic integrity. If you have doubts about whether you are using your own or others’ writing ethically, ask me. All students are required to carefully read and familiarize themselves with the following guidelines: https://judicialaffairs.sa.ucsb.edu/CMSMedia/Documents/academicintegflyer.pdf
AI Writing (e.g., ChatGPT):
We are now entering an exciting and transformative period in how writers collaborate with generative artificial intelligence (GAI). Rather than avoid or reject these tools, this course embraces learning productive ways to work with them. You are welcome to use GAI models (like ChatGPT) to support your writing process, with two key requirements:
Think of GAI as similar to any other writing tool – like a thesaurus or spelling checker. It can be helpful for brainstorming, drafting, and revision, but should support rather than replace your own critical thinking and writing development. It’s crucial that you take the time to draft, revise, and edit your work to ensure that it meets the course’s expectations and your own standards. Remember, the goal of this course is to help you develop your writing skills, and relying too heavily on generative AI may hinder your growth. The goal is to use these tools thoughtfully while maintaining transparency about their role in your writing process.
[Credit: The concept of the AI Transparency Statement was adapted from Kester Brewin’s article “Why I wrote an AI transparency statement for my book, and think other authors should too” in the Guardian.]
