A Communication Curriculum in Engineering Education: An Alternative Model

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON EDUCATION, VOL. E-27, NO. 3, AUGUST 1984

A Communication Curriculum in Engineering

Education: An Alternative Model

MARY B. CONEY AND JUDITH A. RAMEY, MEMBER, IEEE

Abstract-Typical model curricula in engineering disciplines assume

that training in communication will occur early in the students' academiccareer in the courses taken to meet the general liberal arts requirements ofthe university. This paper argues that this assumption defi'nes communica-tion as a preliminary skill to be learned as a prelude to technical study. Analternative view perceives increasing sophistication in the technical disci-plines as requiring a simultaneous increase in sophistication in communi-cation. The Program in Scientific and Technical Communication at theUniversity of Washington is designed according to the latter view. Ourcourses address the needs of engineers as these needs emerge and changeacross the academic and professional life of the engineer.

INTRODUCTION TO THE MODELE NGINEERING, being a group activity, requires its

practitioners to use the full range of communicationskills: writing, from long formal reports or specifications tobrief informal memos; editing or analyzing of writing, bothof personal work and of work done by subordinates or

other members of the group; and speaking, from formaloral presentations and briefings to working discussions withother members of the team. Oddly, in view of the impor-

tance of these skills to successful engineering practice, theydo not figure in the typical model curricula offered forthe various engineering disciplines. These model curriculachoose instead to depend on the general liberal arts re-

quirements of the college or university to provide trainingin communication-usually limited to freshman composi-tion and perhaps a course or two with a writing componentbeyond that-to be taken during the first two years beforethe students advance to rigorous technical subjects.

Behind the model curricula that rely on this pattern ofeducation in communication lie certain assumptions aboutthe nature of communication and its connection to techni-cal training. One might paraphrase these assumptions as

follows: engineering students ought to learn certain prelim-inary skills such as Fortran and drafting and writing-early on; having mastered them, they can proceed to thereal matter of the discipline. Some students may learn so

little in these early courses or may have so little aptitudethat they have to take further courses as remedial work tobring them up to an acceptable level of skill. The successfulstudents, however, will take these courses early in their aca-demic careers and get them out of the way so that they can

then move on to courses with real professional content.

Manuscript received October 31, 1983; revised May 11, 1984.The authors are with the Program in Scientific and Technical Commu-

nication, College of Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle, WA98195.

Our alternative to this model sees technical training andcommunication training in an intellectual partnership; in-creasing sophistication in the one demands increasing so-

phistication (and thus further training) in the other. We dooffer a lower-division course to prepare students for thekinds of communication they must do at that stage of theircareers, but we do not see our more advanced courses as inany way remedial. On the contrary, we believe that studentsneed more advanced courses not because they did not learnwhat they were supposed to learn the first time, but becausethe substance of what they need to learn changes and grows

with differing work assignments and with the increasingcomplexity of their technical thinking.

Within our curriculum, departments in the College ofEngineering can recommend or require additional study incommunication to be chosen from courses designed specifi-cally for the working context (present and future) of theengineering student; the courses are available within thecollege itself through our Program in Scientific and Techni-cal Communication. The special feature of our program isits flexibility in offering communication skills and conceptscommensurate with the needs of engineers as these needsemerge and change throughout their academic and profes-sional lives. For that reason, we think of our program as

providing a dynamic approach to communications study.Before looking at the curricular implications of this

approach, we must look briefly at some recent studies of therole communication plays in the working life of engineersand at the degree of success that the older model can claimin preparing engineers for this dimension of their careers.

COMMUNICATION ACTIVITIES IN ENGINEERING PRACTICE

Much work has been done recently demonstrating thecentral role of communication activities in engineeringpractice. The findings indicate that engineers spend a signif-icant portion of every working week solely on communica-

tion tasks, and that these tasks are not subsidiary to "real"engineering work, but in fact constitute a legitimate shareof it. Furthermore, the specific communication tasks thatmust be done shift and change with the rank of the engi-neers, the kind of problems they are working on, the size oftheir group, and other considerations.One such study, by David Dobrin and James Paradis of

M.I.T. [1], examined the writing done in a research and

development group in a major corporation. The resultsshowed that the managers, staff engineers, and scientists

within the group not only employed a variety of communi-

0018-9359 /84 0800-0137$01.00 1984 IEEE

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cation forms (letters, memos, formal reports, proposals,and oral presentations), but spent a large part (close to 40percent) of their time performing these tasks (tabulated inTable I).The authors further found that writing served subtle yet

crucial purposes for the individuals involved, for the group,.and for the organization as a whole: it appeared to be vitalto decision making, by setting fluid and complex conceptsinto a form which allowed others to evaluate them andrespond to them; it also emerged as an important way formanagement and staff to coordinate, monitor, and inte-grate activities. Writing frequently stimulated ideas andencouraged productive activity.

In spite of the fact that communication skills play a cen-tral.role in engineering practice, many engineers report thatthey are poorly prepared to handle this aspect of the job.For example, in a recent study of software engineering byLeland Beck and Thomas Perkins L2], the authors con-cluded on the basis of such reports that the area of com-munication skills was one of the three areas with the great-est need for the development of new techniques in softwareengineering (the other two being the areas of te.sting andvalidation and project management).

Beck and Perkins sent a surveying form to computerusers in the Dallas-Fort Worth area requesting respondentsto report problem levels for various areas, including thefollowing categories under communication skills: user/ sys-tem documentation, communication between project teammembers, communication with higher management, andcommunication with end users. Relatively high averageproblem levels were reported for many of these areas (TableII).To offer a final example of the needs that engineers

express in these areas and the failure of the older model ofcommunication study to meet them, a study by WilliamKi-mel and Melfort Monsees [3] asked engineers to rate thecapabilities of professionally young electrical engineers(those who have graduated from one to five years ago) inareas of competence important to electrical engineeringpractice; the surveyed engineers at the same time rankedeach area of competence according to its degree of impor-tance. Well over half the respondents ranked the combinedarea of writing and speaking as most important to electricalengineering practice (Table III).

Although the area of writing and speaking was rankedmost important by over half of the respondents, at the sametime almost exactly half found recent graduates inferior atit. This is the only area of competence in which such a largediscrepancy between importance to electrical engineeringpractice and ability was reported.

All of this evidence points to the same conclusion: theolder -model of communication study that underlies theapproach of existing model curricula has not succeeded inpreparing engineers to meet the communication needs theyface in their careers. These model curricula depend on gen-eral liberal arts requirements (usually at the lower-divisionlevel) to train engineering students in writing and othercommunication areas. This dependency is stated quite suc-

cinctly, for instance, in the report of the ACM CurriculumCommittee on Computer Science, "Curriculum '68: Recom-mendations for Academic Programs in Computer Science"[4]: "Since the liberal education requirements of eachschool are already well established, the Committee has notconsidered making recommendations on such require-ments." The "liberal education requirements" must beunderstood to include communication. As with the modelcurricula for other disciplines, later studies adopted thesame approach, although at the same time often confirmingthe seriousness of the need for students to improve theircommunication skills [5].

In view of the inadequacy of the traditional communica-tion preparation, the claims of our model merit considera-tion as an alternative approach that attempts to build on aconceptual common ground with engineering disciplines toaddress the complexity of the needs in engineering com-munication.

CURRICULAR IMPLICATIONS OF THE MODEL

The philosophical view that animates our alternativemodel for a communication curriculum sees communica-tion as a discipline to be studied throughout the engineeringcareer; conceptual development in this discipline and in theengineering discipline occur s'imultaneously. Writing andthe other communication activities are not skills to belearned once; they must be renewed and learned with amore sophisticated understanding as intellectual and tech-nical capabilities grow, so that the principles at work inthem can be shown in greater complexity and for a widerrange of applications.Our view of the study of communication has developed

over the years that our program has been developing intoits present form; the University of Washington's Programin Scientific and Technical Communication is both one ofthe oldest in the country (the first course was taught in1946; the undergraduate degree program was begun in1974) and one of the few located entirely within a college ofengineering. This long and close association with tech-nology and science has yielded several of the controllingideas of our model: 1) the belief that engineering design anddocument design are best approached by process method-ology; 2) the concern with industrial practices and theirimport for the classroom; 3) the insistence on the insepara-bility of technical issues and their communication to var-ious audiences.

Thus, although we offer an introductory technical writingcourse for lower-division pre-engineering students, thiscourse represents only a small part of our offerings. Theheart of the program is in our advanced courses, whichcombine diversity of subject matter with an underlyingunity of approach. In our upper-division writing courses,we present writing as a process, a process bound up with theproblem-solving and design processes it seeks to explain.Furthermore, we base our presentation of document designon engineering practices as we and others have observedthem in industrial and corporate settings. Finally, in all ourcourses we explore the complexities of the relationship of

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CONEY AND RAMEY: COMMUNICATION CURRICULUM IN ENGINEERING EDUCATION

TABLE ICOMMUNICATIONS ACTIVITIES IN AN ENGINEERING GROUP

% Job-Related lime

Employee Group Reading/

Writin)g Editing Oral Total

Managers (2) 5 216 5 :36

Supervisors (6) 20 23 5 48

Staff (25) 21 6 5 32

This table shows the average percentage ofjob time various members ofthe research and development group spent on writing-related activities.Source: [1].

TABLE IIPROBLEM LEVELS REPORTED FOR VARIOUS PROBLEM AREAS

Problem Area Problems, Entcountered

Very Average

F ew Many Probl em

1 2 3 4 5 Leve 1

1 Identification of need foi a system 2(1 14 5 7 4 2. 1

2. Development of user reqjuiremnents 3 9 22 14 12 3. 4

3. Development of s5ystem speci.Firatinn 7 20 14 11 7 2.8

4 Feasibility studies 14 19 13 5 1 2. 2

5. Preliminary system design 11 30 1? 5 2 2.3

6. Detailed system design a 27 14 11 0 2. 5

7. System coding 17 23 19 2 0 . 1

B. System testing and validati or} 5 14 19 16 7 3. 1

9. System Installation )4 17 17 6 5 2. 6

10. System Maintenance 11 26 J 10 6 2.6

11. Project Marnagemerst and Corntrol 13 17 22' -,7 6 2. 8

12. User/system documentation 10 14 14 11 10 2 9

13. Communication between project

team members 1i3 22 16 4 0 2. 1

14. Communication with higher

management 13 12 113 13 5 2 8

15. Communication with end uscrs 10 16 13 13 9 2 9

Source: [2].

technical content to the communications context: purpose,use, and audience.

Before turning to a description of the courses and degreepatterns that make up our program, it will be helpful tosketch in the composition of the student body in the Collegeof Engineering. The college enrollment consists entirely of

upper-division and graduate students; the students are

admitted to the college only when they are accepted by a

department. The enrollment this year is expected to be 2218students.By comparison, the courses offered in the Program in

Scientific and Technical Communication during the schoolyear 1982-1983 (Table IV) attracted a total of 1011 stu-dents. In addition to engineering students, lower-divisionpre-engineering students as well as students from other col-leges can and do take our courses. (The enrollment figure is

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TABLE IIICAPABILITIES OF RECENT EE GRADUATES

Importance to EE Capability of Recent EE

Practice Graduates (1-5 Years)

Most Less

Imp. Imp. Imp. Area of Competence Superior Adequate Inferior

86 66 1 Writing and speaking 4 59 62

56 68 22 Power enginei'T ing anrid energy 7 68 38

systems

53 71 22 Digital and hybrid computer systems 34 77 20

4 72 26 Discrete and integrated electronics 18 79 13

42 90 10 Solid-state devices. 22 88 14

33 77 41 Automatic control 11 86 16

37 81 24 Communication and information 1's 81 22

systems

35 78 26 Network theonnq 15 93 15

22 100 24 Economics and finai-ce 3 73 52

17 59 55 Advanced autotmatior, 7 90 19

13 52 78 Antennas ard wavce propagation 7 75 19

11 45 80 Arti ficiaj it. Irn C LC 4 72 21

9 5L0 88 Social scienLse and humda±cities 6 100 22

Source: [3].

not adjusted to account for students who took more thanone of our courses during the year [6].)About three-quarters of this enrollment was accounted

for by the four service courses we offer. Engineering 130,Introduction to Technical Writing, is our lower-divisioncourse for pre-engineering students; it introduces the basicpatterns of technical discourse (for instance, description ofa process or set of instructions) and requires a researchpaper and lab report. The focus is on academic writing.

In Engineering 331, Advanced Technical and ScientificWriting, the focus, on the other hand, shifts to professionalwriting; in this course we introduce writing as a processwith the same dimensions as a design or problem-solvingprocess: analyzing the situation, planning the project, writ-ing, and revising. Upper-division students take this courseto prepare them for the writing assignments they will do onthe job.

In addition, Engineering 332, Technical Briefings andPresentations, enriches the upper-division students' prepa-ration for the oral communications tasks they will en-counter on the job. Our fourth service course, STC 300

(Practice in Technical Writing), is offered only concurrentlywith technical courses to add a writing component to them.

Engineering students can also choose from several of theelective courses we offer in our professional degree programin scientific and technical communication.

This year we have added a new course-STC 407, Com-puter Documentation; first taught in the autumn quarter,the course had an enrollment of 26 students. Building onthe foundation of process methodology shared with ourother writing courses, this course takes the students throughthe life of the documentation of a system from the planningand information-gathering stages through writing and re-view to maintenance by revision and updating. The studentsdo their work using a text editor; for their final project, theywrite a section of a tutorial about one text editor using adifferent one.

Several of our other courses offer further specific appli-cations of our approach. STC 408, Special Documents:Proposals, Environmental Impact Statements (EIS), andManuals, explores the special requirements of these docu-ments and the demands made upon the communicator by

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CONEY AND RAMEY: COMMUNICATION CURRICULUM IN ENGINEERING EDUCATION

TABLE IVTHE PROGRAM: 1982-1983

Service Courses No. Sections No. studjents

Engr 130 -- Introduction to '[PLhYr al

Wr i tin g 12

Engr 331 -- Advanced Scientific adod

Technical Writinig 13

29 .3

3 1 '2

Engr 332 -- Technical Briefings dnd

Presentations

STC 300 - Practice in Techniical

Writing (offeved concu'rrentlywith a technical course)

TOTAL for Service Courses

14'.e

31

Degree Program

STC 401 -- Scientific arId Technical

Communication

STC 402 -- Scientific and Technical Editinq

STC 403 -- Publications Project Management

STC 415 -- Production Editing

STC 408 --- Special Documents: Proposals, EIS

and Manuals i

STC 409 -- Writing for Publication I

STC 495 -- Professional Prectice (Internships) 4

(STC 407 -- Computer Documentation; first

taught Autumn 1983)

TOTAL. for Degree Program

GRAND TOTAL

776

3

24

26b

le

-3I

1 O1I

14

45

aThe numbers are not adjusted to account for students who took morethan one of our courses during the academic year.

Source: Program Report based on College of Engineering AdmissionsOffice Report, University of Washington, Seattle, WA.

them. STC 409, Writing for Publication, introduces stu-

dents to a rational process of submitting work to be pub-lished by a professional journal. (Several students who havetaken this course in the past have used it to guide them inpreparing and submitting an article in their discipline to astandard professional journal in the field.)

With this range of courses, students can begin to build up

a conceptual sophistication about communication and alsofocus on specific preparation for the kinds of communica-tion they expect to do in the career they choose. They can

begin with ENGR 130, which concentrates on the kinds ofcommunicating they must do as students: lab reports, pa-

pers, etc. Later, as they look ahead to their careers, they canchoose professionally oriented courses in writing, oral pre-

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sentations, and special topics such as computer documenta-tion. Thus, as they mature intellectually and professionally,they can learn to communicate at a level commensuratewith that maturity.We also offer an undergraduate degree in scientific and

technical communication; in this curriculum, students aretrained not as engineers but as communicators prepared towork with engineers. For the students who find that theywant a professional career in this field, there are two degreeoptions. They can take an interdisciplinary Bachelor ofScience degree with a concentration in scientific and techni-cal communication in the College of Engineering; thisdegree combines a strong broad education in mathematicsand science with professional preparation (including aworking internship with a firm or agency in the students'major technical area of interest). In addition, highly moti-vated students can take a Bachelor of Science in engineer-ing, a more technically demanding degree. To meet therigorous curricular requirements of this degree and therequirements of our program, the students have to takecourses for about one extra quarter; their degree is an engi-neering degree with a minor in scientific and technicalcommunication.

In our degree program, we offer four core courses. STC401, Scientific and Technical Communication, develops asophisticated and professionally oriented view of communi-cation as a process. Scientific and Technical Editing, STC402, treats editing as a flexible and predictable process ofrevising someone else's work; the course introduces the stu-dents to the use of word processing and gives them someexperience with on-line editing. STC 415, Production Edit-ing, covers principles of design, typography, graphics, andother production issues; the students also learn to use acomputer to drive a phototypesetter. Finally, STC 403,Publication Project Management, looks at the administra-tive dimensions of a publications unit and introduces stu-dents to standard theories of management, leadership, andmotivation and basic scheduling, monitoring, and budget-ing techniques.We also propose to supplement our undergraduate offer-

ings with a professional master's degree in scientific andtechnical.communication, which we hope will be availablefor the school year 1984-1985. Students in this programwill choose from two degree paths similar to the two under-graduate degree choices. At the graduate level, the Masterof Science path will meet the needs of professionals incommunication who want to enhance their formal training;the Master of Science in engineering, a more technicallyoriented degree, will address the needs of engineers who arechanging careers or preparing for new work assignmentscentered on communication.

Even after leaving the academic environment, engineerscan take our continuing education courses to refresh theirskills or learn new ones. (Among the compelling reasons forpursuing continuing education asserted in M.I.T.'s report"Lifelong Cooperative Education" [7] is the fact that "manyemployers are complaining that engineering graduates can-not effectively communicate.") Practicing engineers takeour courses both as part of professional growth and as away to prepare for post-degree changes in career. The range

of courses we offer supplements our regular curriculumwith topics such as Managing Writing, Review and Ap-proval, Designing On-Line Documentation, and ImprovingTechnical Writing Style.We offer this model of a communication curriculum in

engineering with the hope that, at the minimum, it mightencourage other engineering institutions to offer similarcourses. We further hope that this presentation of themodel will stimulate discussion about the assumptions con-

cerning the relationship of communication and engineeringpractice.

REFERENCES

[I] D. Dobrin and J. Paradis, M.I. T. Rep., vol. 10, Sept. 1982.[2] L. L. Beck and T. E. Perkins, "A survey of software engineering prac-

tice: Tools, methods, and results," IEEE Trans. Software Eng., vol.SE-9, Sept. 1983.

[3] W. R. Kimel and M. E. Monsees, "Engineering graduates: How goodare they?" Eng. Educ., pp. 210-212, Nov. 1979.

[4] "Curriculum '68: Recommendations for Academic Programs in Com-puter Science," Commun. ACM, vol. 4, pp. 151-197, Mar. 1968.

[5] For instance, Engel and Barnes, "The revisions of curriculum '68:Background and initial development," in Proc. IFIP2nd World Conf.Comput. Educ., pp. 263-272, 1975; and also Education Committeeand Model Curricula Subcommittee, "A curriculum in computerscience and engineering committee report," IEEE Computer Society,Jan. 1977; and Proc. Joint College Curricula Workshop Comput.Sci. Eng. New York: IEEE, 1978; and ACM Subcommittee on Com-munity and Junior College Curricula, "Curriculum recommenda-tions and guidelines for the community and junior college career pro-gram in computer programming," SIGCSE Bull. 9, June 1977, pp.17-36; anid ACM Curriculum Committee on Computer Science, "Cur-riculum recommendations for undergraduate programs in computerscience: A working report," SIGCSE Bull. 9, June 1977, pp. 1-16.

[6] The College of Engineering requires every engineering student to takeat least one writing course, but does not specify a particular course.

Most departments, however, recommend that the course be taken inour program.

[7] "Lifelong cooperative education: Report of the Centennial StudyCommittee," Dep. Elec. Eng. Comput. Sci., Mass. Inst. Technol.Cambridge, Oct. 2, 1982, p. 12.

Mary B. Coney is an Associate Professor in theProgram in Scientific and Technical Communica-tion of the College of Engineering, University ofWashington, Seattle. She teaches courses in tech-nical and professional writing and supervises spe-cial projects and studies involving individual stu-dents. She has taught professional writing andediting courses to a great variety of communityand business organizations throughout the north-west. In addition, she has published a number ofarticles on technical writing and she reviews manu-

scripts for a major professional journal. Her current area of research centerson theories of discourse and their implications for technical style.

Ms. Coney is a member of the Society for Technical Communication, theCouncil for Programs in Technical and Scientific Communication, theModern Language Association, and the National Council of Teachersof English.

Judith A. Ramey (M'83) received the Ph.D. degreeX1 _L:QD: from the University of Texas at Austin.

For several years she worked in technical pub-lications at Texas Instruments, Inc. She is cur-

rently Assistant Professor in the Program inScientific and Technical Communication of theCollege of Engineering, University of Washington,Seattle, a position she has held since March 1983.Her research interests are in the application of

^,N. V gl_ rhetorical and linguistic theory to the design andtesting of computer documentation, the impact of

the computer on communications and information management, and thedesign and use of on-line documentation.

Dr. Ramey is a member of the Association for Computing Machinery, theSociety for Technical Communication, and the Association of Teachers ofTechnical Writing.

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