IIT BSCPE Self Study 2008 - Illinois Institute of Technology

Concurrent with those actions, the ECE Department developed during the 2003/2004
academic year the “ECE Guide to Laboratory Report Writing.” The Guide was
developed with cooperation from IIT’s Communication Across the Curriculum
program. The ECE Faculty at its 5 May 2004 meeting voted to approve the guide and to
mandate its use in laboratory courses beginning in Fall 2004. The goal of adopting the
Guide is to provide a framework in which the writing skills in major coursework can be
improved over the four-year program. The Guide states to students the need for clear
writing, defines the audience, provides a structure, and stresses the importance of
language and style. A Grader’s Checklist is included to ensure the evaluation of the
communication component of the laboratory report grade. A component of the report
grade in all ECE laboratory courses is based on the communications component. The
laboratory reports, together with the Guide, are also available for use as writing samples
provided to the Communication Across the Curriculum program for their assessment of
communication skills of the students.
The impact of the adoption of the report writing guide is not yet clear. The 2 May 2008
outcomes assessment report noted that 20 of 21 faculty course assessments of
communications related objectives indicated satisfactory achievement in
communications skills. However, there is no comparable data from the 28 March 2005
report. Though the Communications Across the Curriculum (CAC) program had
provided evaluations of writing samples (predominantly laboratory reports) in May
2002, no further reports from the CAC program have been provided to the ECE
Department.
Also in regard to further strengthening success in achieving program outcomes relating
to communications skills, the outcomes assessment report dated 2 May 2008 proposed a
formal definition for the design project included in 400-level professional electives with
laboratory component. This proposal formalized the characteristics of the design
experience that were already in place, but it also added requirements regarding written
and oral project reports. The proposal was debated an amended at the ECE Faculty
meeting on 6 May 2008, where the following communications skills characteristics
were adopted for inclusion in each such course:
• The project requires a written report that clearly describes the design process,
the procedures used to measure performance, and the design results and their
interpretation. The report must be a stand-alone document that is readable by an
informed person without reference to other materials (including but not limited
to the document that defines the project assignment and the course's laboratory
manual).
• The project requires a presentation or demonstration of the project results. (This
is an oral communication component to the project assignment.)
• The project grade must include component evaluating performance on the
written and oral communication aspects.
In the 28 March 2005 assessment report, a recommendation was made to the ECE
Faculty that a plan be developed to use the student branches of HKN and IEEE as a
formal, structured means to encourage in BSEE students the recognition of the need for,
and an ability to engage in, life-long learning. The ECE Faculty adopted this
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