Through the Looking Glass: Identifying Causes of the Alice-Syndrome in Undergraduate Engineering Writers

This study grew out of a question asked by an engineering professor at the University of Windsor, Peter Frise, who observed while reading design proposals from his fourth year students: 'Many of these kids actually write like engineers! What accounts for the difference between those who do and those who don't?' Peter had just moved from teaching Engineering at Carleton where he specialized in introducing first-year students to their engineering studies. In Windsor, his responsibilities had shifted to primarily fourth-year and graduate students. He remembered only too well how ineffective and unengineering-like the writing of his first year students had been. We picked up Peter's question and began to collect data.

Artemeva, Natasha and Janna Fox. Newsletter of the CASLL (2003). Articles>Education>Engineering