Techniques for Teaching Communication Skills to the Millennial Generation

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Candice Bauer
Keyword(s):  
Communication Skills ◽  
Generation X ◽  
Millennial Generation ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Technical Writing ◽  
Lesson Plan ◽  
Team Building ◽  
Writing Skills ◽  
Lesson Plans ◽  
K 12

Techniques for teaching communication skills to engineering students of the Millennial Generation are reviewed. A detailed outline of the characteristics of the Millennial Generation are described and compared to the traits of other generations. The Millennial Generation has several distinct characteristics such as developing inclusive relationships, tolerating authority, and leading by collaboration. This contrasts with the characteristics of the Baby Boomers and Generation X (the majority of professors and the students’ parents); however, the characteristics align closely with the Traditionalist Generation (higher administration and the students’ grandparents). Strategies for working among the generations are detailed resulting in the creation of an understanding of how to teach to the Millennial Generation. In order to aid the understanding, lesson plans which focus on creating a learner-centered environment are detailed. The lesson plans include objectives, strategies, content, activities, assessment techniques, and ABET alignment. The topics include team building, effective meetings, a term project, writing skills, and speaking skills. Team building illustrates why and how a team achieves its objectives. Example activities include the development of a team charter. The effective meetings lesson plan details techniques on how to teach students project management skills. Criteria for developing term projects to match the Millennial Generation characteristics are detailed, and an example which also includes K-12 outreach activities is presented. The lesson plan for speaking and writing skills defines grading rubrics for the evaluation and assessment of technical writing and presentations. This work has been in development and implemented for nearly five years in a junior level, multidisciplinary course entitled, Engineering Communications, at the University of Nevada, Reno. The lesson plans are evaluated based on course evaluations, industry interviews, case studies, and an alumni survey.

Teaching a Technical Writing and Research Course to Engineering Students

2021 ◽  
pp. 22-38
Author(s):  
Anna-Maria Andreou
Keyword(s):  
Communication Skills ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Technical Writing ◽  
Course Development ◽  
Engineering Profession ◽  
Engineering Programs

Training in communication skills is considered extremely important in the engineering profession. However, educational organisations and most specifically engineering programs and departments have often been criticised for failing to adequately prepare engineering students for the situations they will face in the workplace. This chapter describes a technical writing and research course that is offered as a required course to engineering students and analyses the advantages and limitations of the course pointing to changes in the course development that will enable students to perform successfully as communicators in the workplace.

scholarly journals Using Community Service Learning to Develop the Writing Skills of Engineering Students

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Meyer ◽  
Helen Triantafellou ◽  
Kim Davis
Keyword(s):  
Service Learning ◽  
Community Service ◽  
Communication Skills ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Writing Skills ◽  
Effective Communication ◽  
Community Service Learning ◽  
Community Based ◽  
Engineering Communication ◽  
Audience Awareness

In our Engineering Communication Skills classrooms we aim to provide a meaningful setting in which students move from the classroom sphere to the professional sphere of writing. In this paper, we report on how we can use community service learning (CSL) to bridge these two spheres of writing. We show how the necessity of effective communication with community-based clients leads to audience awareness and subsequent acquisition of professional Engineering communication skills.

Learning about serious game design and development at the K-12 level

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Bill Kapralos
Keyword(s):  
Elementary School ◽  
School Children ◽  
Game Design ◽  
Elementary School Children ◽  
Lesson Plan ◽  
Lesson Plans ◽  
Serious Game ◽  
Design And Development ◽  
Content Type ◽  
K 12

PurposeVery little effort has been dedicated to the teaching of serious game design and development. At the post-secondary level, very few courses dedicated to serious game design and development exist. At the K-12 level, although (entertainment) game design and programming instruction are becoming more widespread, serious game design and development is ignored. This study aims to present a series of lesson plans that allow K-12 teachers to introduce students to serious game design and development.Design/methodology/approachThe lesson plans include both a didactic and applied component and are intended to provide students with an introduction to serious games and their design and development while making students aware of the many career paths within this exciting growing domain. They can also be completed entirely remotely lending themselves nicely to online instruction to facilitate the COVID-19 shutdowns and the resulting move to e-learning.FindingsAlthough several high-school teachers and several elementary school children were consulted during the development of the lesson plans, the lesson plans have only recently been made available, and therefore, there is a lack of any teacher or student feedback available regarding their use. Informally, several elementary school children found the lessons to be fun, interesting and informative.Originality/valueThere are currently no existing courses or lesson plans focusing on serious game design and development at the K-12 level, thus making this set of lesson plan novel and unique.

Technical writing improvements through engineering lab courses

2020 ◽  
pp. 030641902093962
Author(s):  
Kamau Wright ◽  
Paul E Slaboch ◽  
Reihaneh Jamshidi
Keyword(s):  
Teaching Methods ◽  
Technical Communication ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Solid Mechanics ◽  
Technical Writing ◽  
Writing Skills ◽  
Assessment Method ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Different Levels ◽  
Generation Procedure

Improving assessment of engineering students’ technical communication skills is a good way to monitor and improve teaching of these skills, and positively impact associated learning. The present study reports on a method used to assess students’ technical writing abilities, while also evaluating the impact of technical writing-related instruction and associated curricular and pedagogical approaches. In this way, students’ improvements can be mapped to instruction methods. The strategies for enhancing the delivery of technical writing-related instruction are discussed in terms of the proposed assessment method. This method has three main parts: 1) Sample Generation Procedure – the strategic establishment of a pair of written reports, serving as BEFORE-Labs and AFTER-Labs, and similar enough in topic to justify comparison after assessment, but unexpected to students so that reports are not simply replicated; 2) A Rubric for Technical Writing – encompassing major features of technical writing requirements of engineering lab courses and developed to be both descriptive (having descriptions in each category, to make expectations explicit for evaluators and students) and holistic (having short summarizing narratives for different levels of work, to capture overall quality quickly); and 3) an Evaluation Demonstration – in which a matrix of faculty instructors from sections of different engineering lab courses used the rubric to retroactively assess the samples. Together, these efforts are used not only to assess improvements in students’ technical writing, but by effect also gauge teaching and effectiveness of curricular and pedagogical interventions. In two engineering lab courses, a thermo-fluid lab course and a solid mechanics lab course, BEFORE-Labs and AFTER-Labs were generated using either a method of impromptu “one-hour labs”, with experiments conducted and reports submitted all within an hour at the beginning and end of one semester, or comparison of full lab reports from consecutive semesters of students. Evaluation results clearly show that there were aggregate improvements in students’ technical writing skills, and as such it is concluded that the teaching methods were effective.

scholarly journals Effective Writing Techniques for Engineering Students

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (9) ◽  
pp. 1139-1140
Keyword(s):  
Significant Role ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Technical Writing ◽  
Writing Skills ◽  
Corporate World ◽  
Engineering Writing

Engineering Writing should be comprehensible, explicit, absolute and relevant. In the Corporate World Technical Writing Skills plays a significant role in the career lives of engineers. They are expected to write memos, brochures, proposals, technical manuscripts, contracts and newsletters. The paper is an attempt to explore various horizons in writing and to remediate writing deficiencies of the engineering students.

scholarly journals On the Rocky Road to Academia: Stumbling Blocks for Finnish Engineering Students with English as a Second Language

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (6) ◽  
pp. 36
Author(s):  
Hanna Niemelä ◽  
Johanna Naukkarinen
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Communication Skills ◽  
Situated Learning ◽  
Academic Writing ◽  
Learning Process ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Textual Analysis ◽  
Writing Skills ◽  
Academic Education ◽  
Scientific Publications

Communication skills, especially academic writing skills in English, are vital for a successful career in the global scientific community. Finnish engineering students, however, seem to encounter problems when preparing their scientific publications in English as a second language (ESL) for international forums. Thus, these skills should be enhanced at all levels of academic education to promote students’ development as experts in their field. The paper describes challenges faced by engineering students in academic writing and seeks solutions to promote students’ learning process. In addition to communication issues, the paper enlightens the environment and conditions in which the engineering students operate. By an interpretive study, the paper examines texts written by Finnish engineering students. The qualitative textual analysis is based on Systemic Functional Linguistics. Further, the paper discusses learning of academic writing from the perspective of situated learning. Based on the textual analysis, the paper identifies challenges and problems in academic writing, namely unfamiliarity with publication practices, grammar and terminology problems, unawareness of academic discourse strategies, such as hedging and the use of cohesive devices, and challenges with handling feedback. To enhance students’ competences in academic communication within their discipline, guidance and training of communication skills should be integrated into relevant technical and academic contexts throughout the engineering studies. Thus, in addition to thesis writing, argumentation and writing skills and the use of databases can be enhanced for instance by writing course reports in the form of academic papers. Individual consultation also plays a key role in the situated learning process.

scholarly journals TEACHERS PERSPECTIVE ON COMMUNICATION SKILLS AMONG ENGINEERING STUDENTS

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (37) ◽  
Author(s):  
Shubhangi R. Khambayat
Keyword(s):  
Communication Skills ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Performance Indicator ◽  
Writing Skills ◽  
Global Workforce ◽  
The World ◽  
Core Elements ◽  
Graduating Students ◽  
Self Administered Questionnaire ◽  
Made In

Communication skills among graduating students are seen as a key performance indicator to measure the success of any individual in the world of work in many countries in the region. Taking into account graduating students competing for job positions with a global workforce, it would be their Communication skills proficiency that would be tested to the maximum, as English is the most widely spoken languages in the world at present. An effective communication, act as a bridge to fulfil the gap between world of study and world of work and thereby make passouts readily acceptable to the industry. The institution offering educational programs will have to integrate Communication skills as an integrated component to prepare young students for future employment (ABET, 2000). An attempt is made in this paper to investigate the level of communication skills among students. Teachers’ views were sought on Communication skills via a self-administered questionnaire. It assessed four core elements in Communication skills, including listening, speaking, reading and writing skills. The paper shares the outcomes of this survey.

What Do College Engineering Students Learn In K 12 Classrooms? : Understanding The Development Of Citizenship And Communication Skills.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Merredith Portsmore ◽  
Lisa Moretti ◽  
Kaitlyn Conroy ◽  
Melissa Pickering ◽  
Erin Cejka
Keyword(s):  
Communication Skills ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
K 12
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