Towards Staff Awareness of Communication Education in Engineering

Traditionally engineering staff have had little to do with issues of communication. However, because PBL has been adopted as a teaching/learning approach, communication is now an integral part of the engineering course. As a result, it has become necessary to train staff to handle this new requirement. At Victoria University, Australia, it was decided that staff should undergo professional development to update their knowledge of the teaching and learning of written and oral communication skills and aspects of language education. This paper describes the workshop program specifically designed to orient staff in recognising the student learning strategies and learning style preferences to be able to assist the learners to develop lifelong learning skills, particularly concerning oral and written communication. This orientation of engineering staff to language and communication as a discipline is a shift towards holistic engineering education within the PBL paradigm.