Professional Communication for Engineering Students
Curriculum guideline
Some or all of the following methods will be used:
- lecture/discussion
- group work
- peer review
- projects
- instructor feedback on students' work
- individual consultation
- presentation (individual or group)
Course Content:
- The Writing Process
1.1 Planning
1.1.1 Purpose and scope
1.1.2 Audience analysis
1.1.3 Form and format conventions
1.1.4 Organizing and outlines
1.2 Drafting
1.2.1 Clarity, coherence, and conciseness
1.2.2 Tone
1.2.3 Effective sentences and paragraphs
1.3 Revising
1.3.1 Drafts
1.3.2 Peer review
1.3.3 Final submission
2. Rhetorical principles and strategies
2.1 Audience analysis
2.2 Persuasive correspondence, proposals, and reports
3. Critical thinking
3.1 Identifying technical, ethical, and social issues in engineering
3.2 Analyzing technical, ethical, and social issues in engineering
4. Research strategies
4.1 Library resources
4.2 Online resources
5. Graphics
5.1 Documents
5.2 Oral presentations
6. Oral presentations
6.1 Informative presentations
6.2 Persuasive presentations
6.3 Presentation aids and graphics
7. Job search tools
7.1 Résumés and cover letters
7.2 Online job application tools
8. Academic integrity
8.1 Citing sources
8.2 Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and American Psychological Association reference citation styles
9. Teamwork, project management, and professionalism
Students who successfully complete this course will be able to:
- Use the multi-step writing process to plan, draft, and revise reports, correspondence, and presentations.
- Use rhetorical and audience analysis strategies to produce persuasive research reports and presentations.
- Use research strategies to produce informative and persuasive research reports.
- Produce and deliver oral presentations on engineering issues.
- Produce effective graphics for documents and presentations.
- Use engineering conventions in form, format, and reference citation.
- Produce cover letters and résumés and use job application strategies.
- Demonstrate effective use of teamwork skills to complete communication tasks.
- Demonstrate academic integrity.
- Use critical thinking to identify and analyze contemporary political, ethical, and social issues in engineering.
Students will be assessed using a variety of evaluations, both written and oral, such as the following:
Quizzes/tests/short writing assignments 10%
Research paper topic proposal (purpose, audience) 5%
Annotated bibliography (draft introduction, references) 10%
Informative research paper and presentation 20%
Persuasive research paper and presentation 25%
Cover letter and résumé 15%
Participation 15%
Total 100%
A coursepack or a current edition of a relevant engineering communication textbook such as one of the following may be used:
Beer, D., and McMurrey, D. A Guide to Writing as an Engineer. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
Irish, R., and Weiss, P. Engineering Communication from Principles to Practice. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Stevenson, S., and Whitmore, S. Strategies for Engineering Communication. Toronto, ON: John Wiley & Sons.
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