Enhancing Learning Experience of Engineering Students in Technical English Communication
This project aims to enhance the competitiveness of engineering students studying in THEi’s four engineering programmes, namely Building Services Engineering (BSE), Civil Engineering (CE), Environmental Engineering and Management (EEM), and Aircraft Engineering (AE). More specifically, it enhances their technical English writing skills with the genres of engineering writing by means of a new learning channel using Youtuber’s videos and traditional taught classes, with the sharing of case scenarios via a set of teaching and learning packages. It also promotes self-learning by adopting the pedagogy of blended learning through a tailor-made e-learning platform. It is hoped that our engineering students will be equipped with the essential technical English communication skills for writing technical reports in their final year projects and the professional assessment of the Hong Kong Institution of Engineers (HKIE).
Teaching & Learning Package
Our Materials
To enhance technical English writing skills among the engineering students.
Videos
To inspire the teachers and students of other self-financing post-secondary institutes to enhance the teaching and learning of students’ technical English for their particular profession, the tailor-made technical enhancement courses for engineering students in THEi will be video-recorded and subsequently shared via this e-learning platform.
Guidebook
The student guidebook and facilitator’s guide were developed to enable our engineering students to build up a glossary for writing their Final Year Project (FYP) and obtain useful information relevant to technical English writing skills that is now particularly important to becoming HKIE recognized Professional Engineers.
Cases
Each case included (i) an example of a scenario relevant to the respective professional context under discussion and (ii) opportunities for students to engage in reflective activities in small groups under the guidance of a project implementation team. Each case was accompanied by a series of questions and activities designed to stimulate student discussions and reflection. The reflective activities are varied, and each was designed with specific purposes to stimulate students to think about the appropriateness of the tone or format of the technical documents and to raise awareness of their own level of relevant technical communication skills.
YouTube
With the rising popularity of social media among the young generation, educators and teaching professionals have been exploring the possibility of delivering online classes on YouTube for providing students with another channel to learn with fun outside the normal study time and place. Currently, local students are fascinated with watching the videos of YouTubers. After evaluating the common mistakes of our students made in the quizzes of the technical English enhancement courses, a total of 16 five-minute videos (i.e. four videos for each engineering profession) made and delivered as online classes by our project implementation team and a YouTuber together will be broadcasted on a regular basis and kept long on the YouTube server.
The objective of these 16 five-minute online classes is to review the common mistakes on writing technical English documents in the engineering professions. In this way, broader beneficiaries to all engineering related, including “architecture and town planning” and “engineering and technology” students studying and alumni studied in THEi or other self-financing post-secondary institutions as well as the public engineering sector in Hong Kong can therefore gain more fun learning experience by watching these YouTuber’s videos outside campus or anywhere.
Contact Us
Quality Enhancement Support Scheme | |
| ADDRESS | 20A Tsing Yi Road, Tsing Yi Island, New Territories |
| WEBSITE | https://theieng.com/ |
| TEL | 2176-1500 |
| FAX | 2176-1554 |
| alexwong@thei.edu.hk | |