Course Title: Writing Workshop/Computational Methods III
Author: Emily Lavrador, Cal Poly Humboldt
Date Published: 2025
Course Level: Upper-Level Undergraduate
Course Description: Analytical and numerical methods for ordinary and partial differential equations used in engineering analysis and design. Weekly: 2 hrs lect, 3 hrs lab. Note that my attached syllabus describes the Writing Workshop Lab attached to this Engineering 326 Course.
Learning Outcomes: Upon completion of this course, you will be able to:
- better manage yourself so that you better meet deadlines for deliverables and request
assistance when needed by maintaining good communication with your project supervisor and technical editor. - solve engineering design problems by using computational methods to develop appropriate models.
- write professional lab reports summarizing results of numerical analysis.
- use LaTeX to format lab reports and a semester project technical report.
- communicate your solutions to multiple audiences via memos, reports and presentations.
- explain the usefulness of different numerical methods used for integration and solving
differential equations. - compare and contrast different numerical methods that can be used for the same task.
- solve first order differential equations analytically
Teaching Philosophy: This course was designed as a numerical methods-focused course taught by an engineering professor that has built-in writing instruction from another instructor. As someone who teaches writing for the Composition Department, I thought this was a great opportunity. My personal teaching philosophy is trauma-informed, culturally aware writing instruction. I designed my writing lab for this engineering course to break down larger projects into steps and make visible writing strategies that can help students understand the rhetorical situation of specific engineering genres.
