Back to the basics: Developing a systematic method to teach communication

Soon after his graduation in Industrial Engineering in 2013, one of the co-writers went to see the other, a Communication Professor, to arrange weekly or biweekly meetings because the recent graduate felt that he had not received "systematic instruction in communication." Indeed, based on Writing Across the Curriculum models, as well as just-in-time teaching, the focus of communication "interventions" in Industrial Engineering have more to do with supporting the engineering projects that have communication components than with inculcating a systematic approach to the subject. We began to meet weekly to see if we could determine a systematic approach and soon identified four voices that contribute to personal communication: poet, storyteller, scientist and analyst. We seek to synthesize these voices in an ongoing process focused on journal writing. While journal-writing itself is not novel, we feel our approach is new in its combination of practice, theory and discovery or personal voice. After three years, this work-in-progress will discuss what we have discovered so far and our plans for turning our discoveries into a systematic and creative course in communication.