Engineering Students’ Self-Perceived Communication Competence and Technical Presentation Anxiety

To work in a global context, engineering graduates must be competent professionally as well as be proficient communicators in English, the language widely used in international business (Lee, 2003). Increasingly, engineering graduates need to learn and develop skills about existing technical areas in order to enhance their competitiveness in today’s global marketplace. The Malaysian Engineering Accreditation Council Policy (EACP, 2005) has listed effective communication skills as one of the main competencies that all Malaysian engineering graduates need to master. One of the important communication skills that engineers must develop is the ability to communicate ideas and concepts to a group of people through formal and informal oral presentations. In line with the EAC policy, Universiti Malaysia Pahang (UMP) has taken proactive steps in integrating oral English communication skills in their curriculum and co-curriculum activities. This chapter aims to examine the correlation of engineering students’ perceived communication competence and their level of apprehension in giving a technical presentation. Questionnaires, adapted from McCroskey’s (1988) Self-Perceived Communication Competence and Richmond & McCroskey’s (1985) Personal Report of Public Speaking Anxiety, were distributed to 140 final year UMP engineering undergraduates who were preparing for their Undergraduate Research Report presentation. The results of the study have direct and indirect implications to the teaching and learning of oral presentation skills to engineering undergraduates.

Conceptual Mapping, Visualisation, and Systems Thinking in Engineering

Diagrams and maps have uses beyond the purely technical representations that engineers routinely use as part of their work. Diagrams can also help to clarify and resolve non-technical aspects of an engineering project, by visualizing hidden assumptions, values, and priorities that might remain tacit and unresolved in a purely technical discussion. This chapter shows how systems thinking and mapping allows soft interpersonal and social aspects of an engineering project to be represented and discussed alongside hard technological activities. Any map or model of a complex and dynamic socio-technical system requires simplifying assumptions. Complex adaptive systems theory provides a conceptual framework for identifying the limitations from different types of simplification. Examples from educational technology and from mining engineering show how various types of conceptual map can help in clarifying, negotiating, and combining different perspectives on technologies in a complex human context – to overcome barriers of specialist language and tacit assumptions.

Megatrends in Engineering and Technology Education

Engineers and technologists increasingly have to confront socio-scientific issues and evolving communication technologies. Digital communication technologies, such as social media, are important drivers for growth and for changes in learning and in professions as well as and doing business. In the 21st century, to be a scientifically literate engineer and technologist means also to possess the communicative imagination. Thus, moving toward a future with more fully integrated social media into the world of knowledge and communication practices will be a challenging process of resolving tensions and dilemmas. This chapter presents an overview of current megatrends in communicative imagination and advanced approaches of various communication technologies in engineering and technology education. The chapter also reflects on the transformative nature of social media.

Visualization Skills in Engineering Education

This chapter provides a comprehensive literature overview related to visualization skills development methods, theories related to cognitive development, and use of graphics in learning and teaching engineering drawing subject. In addition, the skills of visualization components and test instruments for testing these skills are also discussed. The description in this chapter begins with an overview of the curriculum in the context of engineering drawings for Higher Education Institutions. Further understanding of visualization skills in engineering, especially elaborated earlier by some scholars and researchers in the science of visual, spatial, and cognitive psychology, are also discussed in this chapter.

Embedding Communication Skills in the Study of the Discipline

The development of communication skills in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) majors is increasingly identified as a priority area, with both academic and industry groups calling for a greater focus on the development of these skills within the higher education curriculum. Although widely recognised as important, there is a lack of guidance within the ICT area as to how communication skills should be taught, and the most effective means of developing these skills. This chapter reports on approaches to teaching communication skills development within the ICT discipline. The main contribution of this chapter is the categorisation of communication skills course activities reflecting the context of modern communication skills required by IT professionals that can be easily mapped to a discipline curriculum. These activities represent examples of both informal activities designed to engage students regularly with developing their communication skills, and formal activities designed to assist assessment, including self- and peer-assessment. The authors present their experiences in the design and delivery of an intensive communications skills course designed for international articulation students. An initial analysis of the progress of these students demonstrates increased clarity in the students’ understanding of study and communication requirements, and improved performance in language-rich assessments.

Linguistic and Cultural Skills for Communication in Global Workplaces of the 21st Century

This chapter examines issues in intercultural communication in regard to the use of English as a global language in the workplace of the 21st century. The findings that emerged from data gathered in two multinational companies inform discussion about the sort of communication skills that workers will require in the global workplace. A case study with an Australian undergraduate class served to examine whether the skills identified in multinational workplaces are, in fact, being developed in graduates. Based on all the above, the author has developed a four dimensional model comprising the intercultural communication skills that future graduates, including engineers and IT professionals, will require for global workplaces. Some strategies that will facilitate the development of such skills are also discussed.

Enculturation into Engineering Professional Practice

The importance of communication skills for engineering professionals is widely acknowledged. Research in the authors’ group indicates that along with other cognitive and behavioral skills, employers of new engineering graduates place high value on communication skills. Here, the authors argue that becoming a professional engineer means entering in to a particular community of practice, one that communicates in a way that is specific to that community of practice. Engineers employ, consciously or sub-consciously, a variety of Vygotskyian psychological tools, and becoming an engineer necessitates new graduates understanding the nature and use of such tools within that community. Recent research in the authors’ group suggests students that engage in experiential learning as part of a work-integrated learning program in engineering are rapidly enculturated into the community of practice that forms the engineering community. This, it appears, occurs by means of legitimate peripheral participation in the community as these ‘newcomers’ work alongside practicing engineers in a form of cognitive apprenticeship. In doing so they gradually adopt mores of communication, eventually becoming legitimate, fully-participating members of the engineering community, and they developed a sense of belonging that is not easily achieved in conventional programs of study in higher education.

Multiple Dimensions of Media Communication Skills

This chapter develops a conceptually informed and empirically grounded account of professionals navigating and negotiating media communication skills and carving out spaces for transnational, trans-cultural knowledge production and exchange (Singh, 2009). This chapter is intended to help engineering and IT professionals better understand the ways in which different approaches to media communication skills can shape transnational, trans-cultural knowledge flows by illustrating different ways to create East/West or South/North exchanges. This chapter focuses on building grassroots professional partnerships locating media communication skills in bottom-up dispositions to periphery/centre exchanges of knowledge. This chapter concludes with methodological reflections on media communication skills in the life history of a professional in this field to provide an indication of ways of envisioning and designing grassroots or bottom-up approaches to transnational, trans-cultural knowledge exchange.

Educating the 21st Century’s Engineers and IT Professionals

In this chapter, some important aspects of preparing engineers and IT professionals of the 21st century are examined, especially in the context of new media communication skills in trans-national and trans-cultural globalised environments. Initially, the chapter refers to the value and need of informal and continuing education; next, it reviews recent learning theories aiming at covering learning in today’s complex, networked, and trans-cultural landscape; it also presents competences demanded in contemporary and emerging engineering and IT workplaces, as well as the skills needed by the 21st century’s engineers and IT professionals. Finally, the chapter has proposed educational policies, enterprise policies, and suggestions for self-directed learning which will help preparing engineers and IT professionals for the workplace and will also enable them to continue learning, individually or in teams, both face to face and distance mode, and participating in real or in virtual communities of practice.

Communication Framework to Empower 21st Century Engineers and IT Professionals

The role of communication has been emphasised ever since Dewey (1929; 1958) refreshingly eulogised the role and impact of communication in social discourse. Analysis of contemporary research outcomes and current literature clearly indicate that communication skills top the priority list with regard to workplace needs that will spur organizational advancement both financially and qualitatively. This chapter focuses on dissecting the workplace needs of engineers and IT professionals with specific emphasis on current and future communicational demands in the Malaysian engineering sector. It also highlights the non-linear nature of communication, which is essentially bidirectional or multidirectional in orientation. The chapter then elucidates its key findings within the Malaysian context as well as proposes a new curriculum design framework for the generation of contemporary syllabuses that meets the dynamic demands of workplace communication. It concludes with suggestions on how engineering and IT professionals as well as purveyors of communication skills syllabuses need to be sensitised on the importance of communication skills in the post-Fordian economic paradigm.