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Effective “Writing to Communicate” Experiences in Electrical Engineering Courses

Abstract To help develop essential communication skills that engineering graduates need, engineering faculty must find ways to incorporate writing into the curriculum. There have been reports of impressive work integrating writing centers or technical communication professionals with engineering courses. However, most engineering programs do not have access to such resources. Writing has been effectively integrated into many senior design courses. Nevertheless, students’ skills would be further developed if writing were included throughout the undergraduate engineering curriculum. But how can electrical engineering faculty do this? Research reported in the literature describes constructivist and knowledge transformation frameworks of how writing helps build knowledge in the sciences. Building on these theories, successful writing experiences in engineering are “writing to communicate” rather than “writing to learn”. This paper highlights several key aspects of integrating effective “writing to communicate” experience into undergraduate electrical engineering courses by an engineering professor in a practical way. These aspects include authentic investigation, motivation for communication, tying the writing to the technical content, a well-defined audience, providing useful practice for an engineering career, and not being overly burdensome to the engineering faculty instructor. Specific examples, student response, and lessons learned from activities in sophomore-level Circuits, junior-level Electronics and a senior-level elective on Optoelectronics are presented.

1. Introduction To help develop essential communication skills that engineering graduates need, engineering faculty must find ways to incorporate writing into the curriculum. There have been reports of impressive work integrating writing centers or technical communication professionals with engineering courses.1, 2, 3 However, most engineering programs do not have access to such resources. Writing has been effectively integrated into most senior design courses. Nevertheless, students’ skills would be further developed if writing were included throughout the undergraduate engineering curriculum. Giving students many opportunities to demonstrate their “ability to communicate effectively” (ABET 3g) is desirable. But how can electrical engineering faculty do this?

Research reported in the literature describes constructivist and knowledge transformation frameworks of how writing helps build knowledge in the sciences. Building on these theories, successful writing experiences in engineering are “writing to communicate” rather than “writing to learn”. In Section 2, this paper briefly describes these theories and then presents six guidelines for integrating effective “writing to communicate” experience into undergraduate electrical engineering courses by an engineering professor in a practical way. These guidelines include authentic investigation, motivation for communication, tying the writing to the technical content, a well-defined audience, providing useful practice for an engineering career, and not being overly burdensome to the engineering faculty instructor. In Section 3, specific examples from sophomore-level Circuits, junior-level Electronics and a senior-level elective on Optoelectronics are presented. These are intended to serve as representative examples of

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Lord, S. (2007, June), Effective “Writing To Communicate” Experiences In Electrical Engineering Courses Paper presented at 2007 Annual Conference & Exposition, Honolulu, Hawaii. 10.18260/1-2--1774