Technical Communication Instruction in Engineering Schools: A Survey of Top-Ranked U.S. and Canadian Programs - Ron Choi ENG 574

Reave, Laura. "Technical Communication Instruction in Engineering Schools: A Survey of Top-Ranked U.S. and Canadian Programs." Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 18, no. 4, 2004: 452-490.

In this peer reviewed journal article, Reave analyzes the results of a survey conducted of 73 top rated U.S. and Canadian engineering schools, which examines how these schools teach communication to engineering students.  Reave begins by establishing that there is a gap between the communication skills of engineering graduates versus what is expected of them in the workplace.  Both engineers and their employers place high importance on communication skills, and agree that they are not adequately prepared by curricula of their engineering schools. 

Reave’s surveyed 50 U.S. and 23 Canadian engineering schools, and categorizes their technical communication initiatives by their:

• Department home. The department (e.g. Engineering, English) home, location, and faculty affiliation can affect the diversity of the student body, the situated learning environment, the availability of instructors, as well as their moral.   
• Required courses. Many schools require their engineering students to take some form of written and/or oral technical, business and/or academic communication course.
• Integrated Instruction.  Communication instruction that is combined or integrated within engineering programs.  This could take the form of a partnership or team teaching with an English or Communication expert; the addition of communication modules to engineering classes; through expert feedback; and communication instruction across the entire engineering curriculum.
• Elective courses.  School can go beyond their minimum requirements and offer elective courses to keep communication in the foreground for engineering students.
• Engineering Communication Centers.  Schools can also enhance communication education by providing a site for individual instruction and assistance in written and oral communication.

Before concluding, Reave also examines how communication skills are assessed, and establishes that communication instruction does indeed improve the communication skills of the learner.  Reave states that a well-designed communication program would begin with a strong base, but continue throughout the curriculum, and is best taught by communication experts that integrate their instruction with the situated engineering environment.  The survey results indicate that the schools with the most extensive communication programs are amongst the highest rated.

I found this article to be a very useful summary of the current communication instruction within engineering schools.  It also validates some of my initial assumptions, e.g. that there really is a engineering communication gap.  It is also a newer article compared to the others I have read up to this point, and therefore offers a bit more relevance, although I’m sure that many of the schools surveyed have since modified or upgraded their communication programs.  I did find the final conclusions to be a bit weak though.  It is clear in reading the article that Reave favors the “integrated instruction” model, but really only describes how different schools apply it, without proving that these techniques are actually better.  Reave also correlates extensive communication programs with the ranking of top engineering schools, but I believe that there are too many potential extraneous variables in order to draw this conclusion.