Technical Report Writing for Engineers

This course contains 6 lessons, designed to be taken 1 week at a time, to build your capability in creating profession technical engineering reports. It was originally created to be hosted on the MOOC platform “futurelearn” and can be found here. It is suggested that you access the content there if you can.

This website has been created to archive the material, so that it is available outside the futurelearn platform. As such, the styles of content may seem a bit odd in isolation. The futurelearn course is designed to take advantage of social learning, where a large group of participants learning together at the same rate. In this stand-alone version, some functions, assessments, or activities may not work. There is an ongoing process to replace the activities that rely on social learning with ones that can be achieved individually, but this may take some time.

Learn to communicate effectively through technical report writing

Technical reports are a vital tool for engineers to communicate their ideas. This online course introduces technical report writing and teaches the techniques you need to construct well-written engineering reports.

Each lesson, we’ll look at a key section of a technical report and the skills needed to write it. You’ll cover areas such as referencing and citations; presenting equations; diagrams and data; and using language and tenses correctly.

We’ll also talk to practising engineers, as well as students and educators who write and mark technical reports, who’ll give their hands-on advice.

What topics will you cover?

• Why technical reports are important for communicating ideas and concepts
• The anatomy of a technical report
• How to write aims and objectives
• Citing and referencing
• Presenting equations and nomenclature
• Figures, diagrams and labelling
• Presenting data
• Units, precision and errors
• Use of language and tense
• How and why to write discussion sessions
• Writing an abstract

What will you achieve?

By the end of the course, you'll be able to...

• Explain what a good technical engineering report is and what they are used for.
• Evaluate what a good report looks like.
• Use a technical report to communicate information.
• Apply knowledge of what goes into the key sections of a report to produce your own report.

Who is the course for?

This course is designed for both student and professional engineers. It will teach you the technical report writing skills you need to tackle everything from a two-page document to a PhD thesis. As such, it will be applicable for the entirety of your engineering degree or career.

Who will you learn with?

Andrew Garrard

I'm a Senior University Teacher and Director of Academic Operations in the University of Sheffield's £81 million teaching facility, the Diamond. I'm an engineer that teaches fluids, thermo and CFD.