WIP: Strategies for Improving the Communication Skills in Engineering Technology Programs

This innovative practice WIP paper describes a novel metric for evaluating students' communication skills in engineering technology programs and provides guidance of how to improve them further. The ultimate objective of any academic engineering program is to prepare students to be ready for future industrial roles and challenges. According to the Engineering Competence Model [1]which was released by the American Association of Engineering Societies and the Department of Labor, this model describes the engineering competence that includes the personal effectiveness competencies, academic competencies, workplace competencies, industry-wide competencies, and industry-sector competencies. On one hand, the Zoomers (Generation Z) were born during the peak of internet and connectivity revolution era and live with tendency to and dependency on virtual sphere. Thus, this might be problematic once those students move to the next phase of their lives and commence their industrial career where performing different tasks requires excellent communication skills and involves full engagement in teamwork, client surveys, and feedback. On the other hand, the engineering technology workplace hosts a wide array of professionals who may be inhomogeneity and/or different in one way or another. Effective communication skills entail meticulous attention to details across all aspects, including forms, style, and context of communication, such as, high context vs low context communication, introvert vs extrovert communication, one directional vs rhetorical communication, virtual vs face-to-face communication, hierarchy communication consideration, and human factors (for example, emotions and psychology) vs machine factors. Thus, gaining informative awareness about all these topics is significantly beneficial. The main goal of this research is to develop an evaluation metric that can be systematically used to continuously assess and develop the students' communication skills in the Engineering Technology programs. The proposed metric may include self-reported surveys and/or structured case scenarios interviews. In addition, the integration and utilization of the gained skills will be investigated, and the best practices shall be recommended. These practices will be shared with the workforce and their feedback sought for further refinement.