The Challenge
An ongoing challenge faced by engineering students and educators alike is a lack of training in the skill of high-quality academic and technical writing. The ability to properly convey complex engineering concepts in technical documentation is essential but often undervalued, with students receiving very little formal training tailored to the needs of engineering research and industry.
Furthermore, the time allocated to the actual writing portion of large academic projects, such as postgrad theses and articles, is often limited and left as a final task in the research process, reducing students’ opportunities to develeop positive attitudes towards writing as fundamental technical skill. Students are left with a lack of confidence in expressing complex ideas clearly and professionally.
Dr. Brandt Klopper explained that he and his colleagues struggle, because the result of this discomfort is that writing skills often aren’t prioritised early enough, with project timelines pushing writing tasks to the last minute. As a result, educators are forced to deal with missed deadlines and academic writing that lacks quality and substance despite the students’ technical understanding and skill - they know what they’re doing, but they lack the ability to express it.
Brandt asserts that students have come to dread the writing portion of their projects, viewing it as a creative “soft” skill rather than a fundamental part of producing high-quality, successful academic research. As a result, he believes that engineering students are missing out on developing all the skills necessary to become well-rounded professionals in their industry.
How NWU’s Engineering Department Has Used Mindjoy’s AI Tutors to Enhance Technical Writing Skills
Having identified the engineering students’ trouble with academic writing and the lack of support and training they’ve received in traditional settings, Dr. Klopper set out to help them learn and make the process less daunting. NWU’s Engineering Department has done this by embracing Mindjoy’s AI tutors to support both undergraduate and postgraduate students in developing their academic and technical writing skills.
In 2024, the department conducted a pilot study led by Dr. Klopper that included a dozen or so AI-literate postgraduate students at various points in their respective degrees. They were provided access to Mindjoy’s AI tutor that had been trained and provided with prompts designed to assist students in their attempt to improve their technical writing in the field of engineering. Students received adaptive guidance tailored to their specific needs across writing tasks, from small assignments to research proposals and postgraduate theses.
Students were encouraged to use Mindjoy and the AI tutor whenever necessary, standing in stark contrast to the usual protocol of always having to schedule an official meeting with a supervisor for an issue that may require no more than a simple answer. However, the idea was never for the AI tutor to replace supervisor guidance - conversely, it was designed to play the role of a complementary resource that supports the traditional student-supervisor dynamic.
Indeed, this on-demand guidance allowed them to work at their own pace and potentially ask more questions than they normally have due to the accessibility of the AI tutor, streamlining the writing process without taking the place of expert human supervision. Brandt used Mindjoy to create an AI tutor that is not only available on demand and allows students to work at their own pace, but also provides personalised feedback that applies directly to the projects on which they’re working.
The way in which the AI tutor engages with and teaches students also takes into account the difference in the way in which engineering students learn compared to, for example, language oriented students in humanities departments. That is, Dr. Klopper has prompted the AI tutor to help students break down writing tasks into a logical arrangement of components, essentially applying the typical engineering mindset and mode of analysis to the writing process, helping engineers learn to write in a way that suits them.
Brandt was intentional about ensuring that the AI tutor and Mindjoy platform more generally could be used by students as an aid to help them learn and understand how to write, not to generate content for them. He highlighted the importance of actively engaging with difficult tasks to get better at performing them - the importance of “the struggle” - rather than handing off the task and never properly internalising the relevant skills.
The Impact
The use of Mindjoy in NWU’s Engineering Department has already seen great success, both from the perspective of students and educators. Students say that they feel significantly more confident in their ability to write academic papers and work that demands technical precision and engineering design principles. They also found that having access to the tutor whenever they needed was incredibly helpful in being able to learn at their own pace and maintain control over the timelines of their academic projects.
Rather than feeling overwhelmed or unsure, they now have a reliable resource that guides them step-by-step, helping them organise their thoughts and clarify complex ideas. According to Brandt, this increased confidence hasn’t just improved their output in terms of writing, it’s had a positive influence on how they approach research and problem-solving overall.
Lecturers, on the other hand, have also welcomed the implementation and impact of Mindjoy on the department. By providing students with personalized, on-demand support, the platform has eased some of the pressures on supervisors, allowing them to focus on higher-level guidance rather than basic writing issues.
That is, AI tutors are not, by any means, being used to replace supervisors - rather, it’s creating a process whereby simple queries are dealt with by the AI tutors and more complex issues can be addressed by supervisors, allowing for a more appropriate use of time. Furthermore, students are also able to better prepare themselves for these consultations so that by the time they engage with supervisors, they’re already at a higher level of understanding than they may have been in the past.
In addition, this pilot project and additional early use of Mindjoy in the engineering department suggests that assessment processes and other administrative work can be streamlined dramatically, potentially saving time and improving consistency in marking and evaluating student work.
Beyond immediate academic benefits, however, Mindjoy is helping to cultivate a mindset shift among technically-minded students who have previously viewed language and writing as inaccessible. By framing writing as a technical skill, it aligns with their engineering training and encourages a more systematic, analytical approach to communication. This shift is essential, as clear and effective writing is a critical skill in industry and research. Overall, Mindjoy’s integration at NWU is proving to be a valuable step towards producing more confident, capable engineers.
