Commonly, assignments of technical reports and proposals focus students' attention on four types of learning tasks:

• analyzing and organizing information for ones' self,
• communicating information to an audience in writing, including visual aids,
• generating an entire document in a prescribed format, and
• perhaps, designing and delivering a related oral presentation.

The list below includes variations on these traditional themes: tasks designed to focus students' attention on specific mental processes involved in preparing a report or proposal.

Ideas for Learning Tasks (i.e., Assignments) that Support Assessment

• Write a complete technical report
• Write a complete proposal
• Write one or more sections of a technical report or proposal:
  • Research question or hypothesis
  • Thesis sentence (One sentence -- the author's main point.)
  • Outline including the main ideas of each section
  • Abstract
  • Introduction
  • Statement of Assumptions
  • Literature Review
  • Method Section (or Materials & Methods Plan)
  • Results & Discussion
  • Annotated Bibliography

Making Scoring/Grading Useful for Assessment

• General principles for making scoring/grading useful for assessment (rubrics)
• Attributes of engineering writing that could be used to construct a rubric #1
• Attributes of engineering writing that could be used to construct a rubric #2
• Attributes of formal, written reports that could be used to construct a rubric (p. 40-41 of the pdf)
• Example rubrics
• • For a writing assignment #1
  • For a writing assignment #2
  • For a writing assignment #3