Intervention design and teaching practice for enhancing engineering skills in reading research articles

Abstract

The constant drive to improve engineering education's pedagogy stems from its crucial role in serving society. The practice of reading research articles is an academic strategy to keep up with the rapid advancement of the information and competencies required of today's engineers. Proficiency in this skill is difficult to attain, and unfortunately, this valuable capacity is often overlooked and not included in the curriculum for undergraduate students, which results in a loss of knowledge and a wasted opportunity. This article presents a practical case in an undergraduate Fluid Technology course, a teaching intervention designed for enhancing engineering students' skills in reading research articles carried out over a period of four months, within the boundaries of the course context. The first aim was to assess the progression of the students’ ability to read research articles. The second aim was to elucidate student perceptions and conceptual cognition of their ‘Capability’, ‘Ability’, ‘Skills’ and ‘Background’ before and after the teaching practice. The teaching encompasses the reading assignments and post/out-of-class activities, the warm-up readings, two in-house ad-hoc lectures, the pre- and post-test readings and the pre- and post-questionnaires. The students' perception of self-improvement, as well as the positive shift in grades, are both reflected in the satisfactory results of the tests and questionnaires. This innovative educational research is readily adaptable to other cases and has potential for educating responsible engineers, thinking and understanding like engineers