Intervention in Engineering Students’ Final Year Capstone Research Projects to Enhance Their Written, Oral and Presentation Skills

Abstract

This article describes an intervention and enhancement approach to improvement in capstone student’s written, oral and presentation skills as part of their final year research project requirements especially for international students, whose first language is not English. Training in these skills have been incorporated into the early stages of the final year research (capstone) project, as an intervention and enhancement program, incorporating a series of intensive seminars and practical applications to provide the students with these capabilities.  In this paper, we report on the research question “how does an intensive intervention and enhancement program in an engineering capstone research project effect students’ perceptions and their capabilities in communicating their research findings.” Results of student responses showed statistically significant differences between perceptions of local and international students in categories of intervention and enhancement in a tutorial environment for writing, oral communication and presentations. International students perceived the intervention and enhancement process of greater benefit to their engineering future than local students did. Overall, the results from this work are relevant to both international and local students who may be lacking in specialised reporting and English skills.