Sociocultural influence on engineering students’ collaborative design project: an Activity Theory perspective

Abstract

Abstract In keeping with discipline-specific genre expectations for writing in scientific and technological fields, students enrolled in English writing classes for future engineers are often required to produce collaborative reports on team projects. For freshman engineering students, such collaborative report writing, which constitutes a cornerstone in their academic literacy, is an entirely new genre. Drawing on Engeström’s (Engeström, Yrjö. 1987. Learning by expanding: An activity theoretical approach to developmental research. Orienta-Konsultit Oy) activity system and Storch’s (Storch, Neomy. 2002. Patterns of interaction in ESL pair work. Language and Learning 52(1). 119–158) interaction model, this paper explores two engineering freshmen’s experiences of working collaboratively in separate groups in the same writing class. Our focal students were both native-English-speaking women at a U.S. midwestern university. Over the course of one semester, they provided their class notes and project report drafts, and they and the course teaching assistant participated in interviews. Our findings demonstrate that while both students had similar levels of commitment to the collaborative project, their writing experiences differed depending on their respective group members and their own attitudes and experiences. Our case study has implications for engineering freshman writing education as we illustrate how the ESP class we examined can help students prepare for academic and professional communication. We also discuss ways to help apprentice future engineers overcome discipline-specific communication difficulties as they enter a new discourse community.