Escrita científica para engenharia: efetividade de formações segundo percepção do público

Abstract

Scientific Writing is about the writing style adopted for scientific texts and its purpose is to communicate the results of scientific research. Despite its importance, the number of class hours dedicated to subjects that focus on the production of texts is small. Different extracurricular initiatives have been presented to offer training in Scientific Writing. In order to support these initiatives, it is advisable first to verify their effectiveness. This study aims to verify the effectiveness of different training courses in Scientific Writing based on the perception of those who take them. To achieve this aim, three training courses on Scientific Writing - a mini-course, a workshop, and a lecture - were observed being given to Civil Engineering students and, at the end of each of them, a form was made available to collect the students’ perceptions. The completed forms were then collected, read, and interpreted. For the universe analyzed (of 31 samples), the high percentage (93.5%) of non-participation in previous training courses on Scientific Writing suggested knowledge gaps regarding Scientific Writing; as for the almost unanimous satisfaction with the training courses offered, the positive sentiment of learning regarding purpose, concepts and parts of a scientific text and a perception of improvement in knowledge led to the conclusion that, according to the perception of those who took the training courses, these have significant effectiveness. It is advisable to improve the aforementioned training courses and verify the possibility of making them available to the target audience before - or even while - they prepare their capstone projects, since this is indicated as a common motivation for those who seek to learn Scientific Writing. For future studies, consider larger samples.