Using Project-Based, Experiential, and Service Learning in a Freshman Writing Intensive Seminar for Building Design and Technical Writing Skills (Work in Progress).

Writing and design are two key skills that engineering students should develop to achieve success. Most commonly, students are exposed to training for these skills separately in the early years of their collegiate coursework followed by their combination in the latter years of study, particularly in upper-level design courses. In fall of 2014, we introduced "Design for Disabilities: Engineering Design Principles for Minimizing Patient Limitations," a new first-year writing intensive seminar (FWIS), in an attempt to expose students to engineering design principles and technical communication in the context of an experiential-learning project early in their college careers. By doing this, we hoped to provide a strong foundation for the development of core competencies in our engineering students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]