Author(s):
Need: Effective communication is valued in industry and linked with enhanced career progression, yet many engineering undergraduates lack these skills. Bridging the gap between the classroom and the professional environment can be challenging for instructors. Engineering faculty may not have the requisite expertise needed to design and assess meaningful communication assignments and students often do not recognize the significance of assignments to their future careers. In addition, the standards and norms of effective communication in engineering depend heavily on the context of engineering practice. As the communication landscape is continually changing, courses integrating communication skills into the engineering curriculum over time may not align with the skills students need as practicing engineers.
In this work, a situated learning approach was employed where industrially relevant scenarios, developed with feedback collected from practicing engineers, were incorporated into a two-part series of senior level chemical engineering laboratory courses. To investigate impacts, student writing self-efficacy was measured pre- and post- intervention. To assess student skills, rubrics that incorporated industry perspectives were developed in collaboration with the University’s Writing Center.
Guiding Questions:
• How do expectations of “good” technical communication differ between instructors and practicing engineers in industry?
• How do communications skills and writing self-efficacy of engineering undergraduates improve with implementation of industrially relevant scenarios?
Outcomes: Five practicing engineers in industry were asked to provide information regarding the types of communication genres they engage in, how often they use the genres, and what communication skills they find most important. Based on survey results, these engineers engaged in diverse oral and written communication genres communicated to a variety of audiences. In response, instructors incorporated into the course a range of assignments situated within industrial scenarios, which included technical reports, presentations and meeting agendas. Looking at the impact of these interventions, surveys found that student writing self-efficacy increased throughout the courses, indicating the students’ belief in their writing abilities improved.
In addition, when industry representatives scored samples of student work, it was found that although expectations and perceptions of work quality generally aligned between instructors and practicing engineers, there were slight variations. The developed rubrics were adjusted to better reflect important industry-relevant skills and were found by inter-rater reliability to show consistency in assessing both technical and communication skills across instructors.
Broader Impacts: This project benefits society by improving STEM education. The project leveraged industry perspectives to inform situated instructional interventions relevant to the engineering profession, thereby improving technical communication skills of chemical engineering graduates and better preparing them to be competitive in the STEM workforce. Through collaboration with a Writing Center, instructors involved in the course underwent professional development by gaining tools necessary to teach and evaluate technical communication effectively throughout the curriculum. Rubrics were developed that could be adjusted for use in any engineering curriculum, along with guidelines for aligning instructor expectations and assessment of student skills through both an academic and industry lens, and disseminated locally, nationally and internationally.
Coauthors
Stephanie Wettstein, Montana State University, Bozeman MT
