Trying to add actions to take here. These are assignments to help you improve your writing.

In many academic departments, writing takes months and years. We combine research and writing into one iterative process. Engineers can do that, too, but there’s a lot of lab work done before most of you decide to write an article. (I hope you’re writing lab notes, though, and taking note of your interim ideas!).  Professors in EE have pointed out that they often have to produce an article in a few weeks. This makes me think that the undergraduate model of teaching writing might actually be more appropriate for EE writers than the quarter-long seminar paper that graduate courses assign. Undergraduate courses often require 3-5 shorter revised assignments. A rough draft gets some feedback, and then the student has a week or so to revise it, while at the same time moving on to the rough draft of the next assignment.

In EE 295, then, perhaps writing and revising some of the following texts would be helpful:

(1) a CV or resume and/or cover letter

(2) an intellectual biography and/or interview

(3) an essay on methods and the defense of those methods

(4) an introduction to a field of inquiry

(5) a proposal

(6) a design thinking exercise of some sort

(7) a teaching unit (writing and presenting it)

(8) a narrative form of a presentation on one’s work

(9) an annotated bibliography and literature review

(10) …

 

I will try to figure out how to put guidelines for these assignments on here. If that doesn’t work, they will be at my course website, alongside models.