A TEMPLATE FOR THE INTEGRATION OF TEACHING AND LEARNING OF COMMUNICATION SKILLS IN THE ENGINEERING COURSE

Published studies in the open literature and experience of new engineering graduates have shown that employees who are able to clearly communicate their thoughts and ideas to their employers through written reports and oral presentations advance more quickly in the organisation compared to those who lack these skills even if they possess superior technical knowledge. Also, surveys of engineering employers have shown that while the technical knowledge of engineering graduates is considered to be adequate, the perception is that graduates lack the personal communication skills required of them in the work place. The traditional method of teaching communication skills to engineering students is through especially designed units which are taught by specialists in the field of communication. Engineering students generally consider these units to be of little importance due to a lack of engineering relevance. In order to overcome such shortcomings, teaching and learning of communication skills was integrated with the teaching of technical contents to final year students in a two-semester long Final Year Project (FYP) core unit in the undergraduate engineering degree during 2003 to 2008. The assessments tasks for the FYP unit included submission of a Project Proposal, a Progress Report, a Research Paper and a Final Report, plus an Oral Presentation. Students were given instruction on how to prepare for these activities at appropriate times during the semester. This paper describes the details of the approach used and the results obtained by students who have completed this unit.