Quality of Academic Writing for Engineering Students at Lund University

Abstract

A high proficiency in academic writing is an important part of higher scientific education. The development of good writing skills is fundamental not only to publish scientific results, but also to have a deeper understanding of a complex subject. A discussion in between the authors regarding personal experiences in evaluating students’ laboratory reports and reviews from the Swedish authority for higher education showed that, at least in the past engineering students at Lund University had unsatisfactory academic writing skills. Our study highlights how scientific writing proficiency requires a diversified training consisting of guidelines, constructive examples and efficient feedback. We performed a survey among Bachelor and Master students at LTH, regarding their knowledge of and attitudes towards academic writing. The survey showed that students rate their writing skills high and the difficulty low even though not all think it is important. This can be due to the fact that scientific writing has not been sufficiently stressed during their education at LTH. We investigated the effects of stressing the importance of good writing practices during a laboratory session on Digital Imaging for the Multispectral Imaging course (FYST‑29). It was found that this intervention did not improve the overall quality of the students’ writing, except for the conclusion section in the reports. This small improvement is encouraging, however it mostly demonstrates that to improve students’ skills in academic writing a composite and long‑term intervention is required. We conclude by suggesting assessment not only on factual content but also on the writing quality of laboratory reports to reinforce the importance of writing quality,
which is beneficial not only to the students’ career but also to the institution’s reputation.