Hypertext Adventures: Computer-assisted Teaching of Technical Report Writing in Delft

Abstract

Technical engineers consider communication and writing skills to be among the most difficult aspects of their profession. Communication courses, however, are expensive, because teaching takes place in tutorial groups in which students are given feedback regularly. A computer-assisted practical that aims at diminishing the amount of effort of the lecturer while increasing the participation of the students through interactive and user-friendly courseware is described. The program is developed in the Knowledge Pro environment (MS-Windows 3). The program consists of three modules: 1) a product module which offers examples of ‘ideal texts’ and criteria for them; 2) a style module which offers information on stylistic aspects such as sentence complexity, use of examples, use of connectives, spelling etc.; 3) a process module, which offers a standard procedure for planning and outlining a technical report and an example, in the form of a (hyper)text adventure.

Besides, the program offers individual advice to students who face problems during the writing process. In each module the student can opt for additional examples or exercises via buttons, menus and hypertext paths. The program has been written in the Dutch language.