Learning to Talk the Talk – Preparing Students for Success during Internships through Communication Workshops

Sarah A. Wilson; Renee Kaufmann

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Conference: 2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access
Location: Virtual On line
Publication Date: June 22, 2020
Start Date: June 22, 2020
End Date: June 26, 2021
Conference Session: Cooperative and Experiential Education Division Technical Session 3 - Co-op Recruitment and Factors Affecting Success
Tagged Division: Cooperative and Experiential Education
Page Count: 11
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--34904
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/34904
Download Count: 594

Paper Authors

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Sarah A. Wilson University of Kentucky

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Sarah Wilson is a lecturer in the Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering at the University of Kentucky. She completed her bachelor’s degree at Rowan University in New Jersey before attending graduate school for her PhD at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, MA. Sarah conducted her thesis research on the production of the anti-cancer compound Paclitaxel (Taxol) through the use of plant cell cultures from the Taxus Yew Tree. Throughout her time at Rowan and UMass, she developed a passion for undergraduate education. This passion led her to pursue a career as a lecturer, where she could focus on training undergraduate chemical engineering students. She has been teaching at UK since 2015 and has taught Fluid Mechanics, Thermodynamics, Computational Tools and the Unit Operations Laboratory. She is especially interested in teaching scientific communication and integration of process safety into the chemical engineering curriculum.

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Renee Kaufmann University of Kentucky

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University of Kentucky, College of Communication and Information, School of Information Science

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Abstract

This research paper is focused on the development of an intern communication workshop to provide students with communication skills that are often not covered in the engineering curriculum. Throughout the 2018-19 academic year, a survey was implemented to better understand the communication skills required of engineers on internships. Through this survey of over 160 engineering students, it was found that interns communicate most frequently with other engineers (i.e., in and out of discipline) and non-engineers with both technical and non-technical backgrounds. Further, the most common types of communication were informal conversations and discussions. In addition to determining the frequency of communication types, it was found that students learned more about these forms of communication during their internship than they did from their college curriculum. While this result highlighted a key benefit of completing an industrial internship, it also indicated a gap between the communication skills taught in the classroom and those required of a career in industry.

To begin to address this gap, a workshop was developed to teach students key communication skills that are required for success in industry. All students completing an internship during the Spring 2020 semester were invited to participate, but attendance was voluntary. Skills highlighted through the workshop include: audience analysis (how to correctly communicate with your audience and understand their motivation), professionalism, digital communication, and team communication and management. Due to low attendance and survey completion rates, the effect of the communication workshop on student competencies could not be determined. That being said, students overall rated the workshop and workshop components as valuable. Additionally, students were active in participating in workshop discussions and seemed engaged and excited about the workshop content. Prior to the start of their internships, student competency data (perceived skill level, confidence and nervousness) was collected. Perceived skill and confidence levels were similar for each communication type and communication audience, but nervousness did not follow these trends. To examine the effect of the internship experience on these competencies, post-internship data will be collected in the Summer of 2020. These data will help to further refine workshop content, as well as provide guidance to faculty about communication skills that should be more heavily addressed in the classroom.

Citation
Format

Wilson, S. A., & Kaufmann, R. (2020, June), Learning to Talk the Talk – Preparing Students for Success during Internships through Communication Workshops Paper presented at 2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access, Virtual On line . 10.18260/1-2--34904

TY - CPAPER
AB - This research paper is focused on the development of an intern communication workshop to provide students with communication skills that are often not covered in the engineering curriculum. Throughout the 2018-19 academic year, a survey was implemented to better understand the communication skills required of engineers on internships. Through this survey of over 160 engineering students, it was found that interns communicate most frequently with other engineers (i.e., in and out of discipline) and non-engineers with both technical and non-technical backgrounds. Further, the most common types of communication were informal conversations and discussions. In addition to determining the frequency of communication types, it was found that students learned more about these forms of communication during their internship than they did from their college curriculum. While this result highlighted a key benefit of completing an industrial internship, it also indicated a gap between the communication skills taught in the classroom and those required of a career in industry.

To begin to address this gap, a workshop was developed to teach students key communication skills that are required for success in industry. All students completing an internship during the Spring 2020 semester were invited to participate, but attendance was voluntary. Skills highlighted through the workshop include: audience analysis (how to correctly communicate with your audience and understand their motivation), professionalism, digital communication, and team communication and management. Due to low attendance and survey completion rates, the effect of the communication workshop on student competencies could not be determined. That being said, students overall rated the workshop and workshop components as valuable. Additionally, students were active in participating in workshop discussions and seemed engaged and excited about the workshop content. Prior to the start of their internships, student competency data (perceived skill level, confidence and nervousness) was collected. Perceived skill and confidence levels were similar for each communication type and communication audience, but nervousness did not follow these trends. To examine the effect of the internship experience on these competencies, post-internship data will be collected in the Summer of 2020. These data will help to further refine workshop content, as well as provide guidance to faculty about communication skills that should be more heavily addressed in the classroom.
AU - Sarah A. Wilson
AU - Renee Kaufmann
CY - Virtual On line
DA - 2020/06/22
PB - ASEE Conferences
TI - Learning to Talk the Talk – Preparing Students for Success during Internships through Communication Workshops
UR - https://peer.asee.org/34904
DO - 10.18260/1-2--34904
ER -