Building Engineering Communication Skills Through Short Assignments

Engineers are expected to be able to communicate via memos, abstracts, graphics, brief communications and oral presentations.Communication skills, however, are often practiced in an undergraduate engineering curriculum either through detailed and lengthy laboratory reports or final oral presentations.The authors have developed a generic sequence of short assignments that build skills needed to produce a final written oral or graphical communication.Each short assignment focuses student attention on a particular component of the final communication.For example, in a sophomore-level Fundamentals of Biomedical Engineering class, students are challenged to report results of a hands-on activity using only a single graphic and 200-word explanation.As students become more effective at conveying their ideas in individual sections, the emphasis can turn toward transitions between sections.After following this sequence, the final communication may be assigned with few explicit instructions aside from format.Limiting the space or time students have to convey ideas may also be applied to the final communication.For example, in a junior-level Biomedical Signals and Systems course, students are challenged to explain semester-long projects in a two-page IEEE format article and 20minute presentation/demonstration.The instructional model works equally well with written, oral or graphical communications and is well suited as a parallel to a large course project.Limiting the space and time to convey ideas has the added benefit of focusing student attention on the important technical objectives of a laboratory exercise.After implementing this instructional model, the faculty have observed a rise in the quality of written, oral, graphical and technical work.Furthermore, end of course evaluations indicate that students understand how the sequence of short assignments develop technical communication skills.seniors), Neural Signals and Systems (BMEG 472, senior/junior elective) and the Senior Capstone sequence (BMEG 401/402, seniors).Second, additional writing characteristics are addressed such as the roles of revision and group work as well as importance of audience.The authors conclude with observations on the implementation of the assignments.