Learning through writing in an engineering course

In the fall 1982 semester, engineering report writing was integrated into the structure of a junior-level electrical engineering course at Howard University. The required homework consisted of engineering reports instead of the traditional textbook problem sets. A follow-up analysis of grades on examinations, on reports, and in later courses showed that 1) student understanding of engineering subject matter was not compromised by the course structure; 2) writing skills improved over the course of the semester; and 3) the correlation of student writing skills to problem solving skills was approximately 0.5.