Coordinator: Simon BOYNTON
Course Description:
This English in the Discipline course aims to develop Biomedical Engineering and students’ ability to write and speak in their discipline. The course will focus on developing students’ ability to write a technical report and give a technical presentation on a medical device they have developed. The English course will run alongside a disciplinary project-based course(s) as nominated by the Faculty of Engineering. This course requires students to develop a portable medical device, such as electrocardiogram (ECG) recording device or oximeter, from scratch, use the device to gain data, and use the obtained data to gain insights into human physiology. The students then need to write a report and give a presentation which explains a mixture of medical and engineering information. This English course will focus on the English language skills needed to complete these assignments. Students will be assessed using the report and the presentation they produce for the Biomedical Engineering course as well as a final written test and an out of class learning component.
Learning Outcomes:
By the end of the course, students should be able to:
- Clearly present technical information in written and spoken texts
- Express clear and logical justifications for engineering choices made
- Successfully evaluate the success and failings of engineering decisions in their writing and speaking
- Use graphics in writing and visual aids in speaking to express complex medical or engineering concepts
- Write a well-organized, coherent, grammatically accurate technical report
- Deliver a well-organized, coherent, grammatically accurate oral presentation
Strategies:
- A genre approach to written work is employed emphasizing on acquiring the discipline specific genre through consciousness raising, analysis, and application
- Student’s written work is closely related to their own discipline project
- Video recording of oral presentations is conducted to add a critical element of tension and to facilitate performance improvements through self-reflection
- Compulsory attendance of rehearsals is required in order to gain feedback from the teacher and peers for improvement before the assessments
- Assigned readings and tasks are set for out-of-class and independent learning
Assessment Methods:
(with breakdown of percentage weighting of the various methods)
- Project reports (45%%)
- Oral Presentations (25%%)
- Tests (20%%)
- Independent learning work (10%%)