2018

This article reports the results of an eight-week action research study of a university classroom innovation using direct instruction in English and peer assessment of an authentic professional task to help students learn 3Ddesign technical English. It is a quasi-experimental study with analysis of qualitative and quantitative data. The main objective was to investigate the impact of teaching a subject in English normally taught in Spanish. The purpose was to add additional guided learning hours and professional vocabulary in English to help students reach new national graduation requirements for English. The methodology included a pre-and post-test quantitative analysis of learning to use software for 3Ddesign, a comparison of final grades for a design project for the innovation group and a control group, and qualitative analysis of interviews of student perspectives to support findings and results. The control group was to assure that content learning was not affected. Results indicate that content learning was not affected, and professional English vocabulary improved. The results show a pre-test average of 4.12 and after the innovation we have a post-test average of 7.5, showing an improvement of 82% during the eight-week classroom innovation. Peer assessment probably had a stronger influence than direct instruction in English because the assessment of students' work by other students of equal status allowed them to improve design analysis through reflection and interaction and it helped them to understand content in English.