The Use(s) of Engineering Notebooks by Bilingual College Students in a Freshman Pre-Engineering Course

• In Event: 25.068 - Roundtable Session 8
  In Roundtable Session: 25.068-8 - Professional Literacies: College, Academic, and Scientific Writing

Abstract

The findings presented in this paper draw on a larger ethnographic study of writing and project-based learning in four freshman pre-engineering courses at a southwestern university located on the U.S.-Mexico border. In this study, we explore the following question: How do bilingual students take up and make sense of engineering notebooks as part of a design project in a freshman pre-engineering course? We present preliminary findings from our semester-long participant-observation of a robotics design project in one pre-engineering section. Our analysis revealed that participants took up and made sense of the engineering notebooks task in a range of ways, from functional to instrumental to processual, as indicated through the linguistic and multimodal features presented in the notebooks.

Authors

• Erika L. Mein, The University of Texas - El Paso

• Christina Convertino, The University of Texas - El Paso