Enhancing Communication Skills in Engineering

Current ABET accreditation standards require undergraduate degree programs in engineering to show that students have mastered “an ability to communicate effectively with a range of audiences.” Studies of working engineers show that they spend 50-60 percent of their days communicating critical information individually and in groups with supervisors, colleagues, and clients through a variety of means that include listening, speaking, writing, and the use of visual and graphic tools. Yet undergraduate engineering programs and curricula struggle to ensure that students master this complex set of skills. New curricular models need to be developed, especially to keep step with evolving communications technologies. Working models also need to be refined and promulgated. And all approaches need to be evaluated to establish benchmarks for effective ways to improve the communication skills of students in engineering programs.

How can we develop, test, identify, and promote the best approaches?

Our Goal:

We want to assist engineering faculty in transmitting the necessary listening, written, verbal, visual, and graphic communication skills that their students need to be successful engineers. Your project might focus on one or more of these skills, create a method for students to develop the selected skills, implement the method in your curriculum, and then test your approach.  Or you might identify an existing model and propose ways to enhance or refine and further test it. We welcome collaborative projects between engineering faculty and communications and/or information science specialists. Also, the earlier the intervention happens in the educational cycle, the better!

 

Do you have ideas for new approaches or for refining and testing existing models?

  • General Program Scope

    The Engineering Information Foundation invites proposals that seek to ensure that undergraduate engineering students master the skills necessary to communicate critical information individually and in groups to diverse audiences through a variety of means that include listening, speaking, writing, and the use of visual and graphic tools. We especially welcome proposals from minority-serving institutions in the US, and institutions in developing countries. Grants in this program range to a maximum of US$25,000.

  • EiF is especially interested in:

    • Innovative projects, with measurable results

    • Projects that promote significant and lasting change

    • Projects that can be successfully replicated elsewhere

    • Methodologies that are specific, well-defined and cost-effective

  • Successful proposals might include, but are not limited to, approaches that:

    • Develop, test, and evaluate new models that focus on listening, speaking, writing, and/or the use of visual and graphic tools and seek to establish benchmarks of success.

    • Incorporate existing and emerging technologies, such as CAD, AR/VR, and AI, and test their effectiveness in improving students’ communication skills.

    • Provide a matrix of instructional programs and materials and test their effectiveness in training engineering students to produce memoranda, project proposals, presentations, and other professional communications.

    • Emphasize teamwork and role-playing as a means for students to learn effective skills for communication in groups and across disciplinary and organizational boundaries.

    • Articulate how communication skills are related to other key competencies for engineering professionals, such as information seeking and use and project management.

    • Link the expertise of communications and information science specialists with the discipline of the engineering faculty.

How to Apply