Development of Competitive Skills in Future Mechanical

7/28/2019 Development of Competitive Skills in Future Mechanical

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Session F1E

0-7803-7961-6/03/$17.00 2003 IEEE November 5-8, 2003, Boulder, CO

33rd

ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference

F1E-10

ENHANCING COMMUNICATION AND PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE SKILLSIN AN INTRODUCTORY ENGINEERING COURSE

Julia Pet-Armacost1, and Robert L. Armacost2

1Julia Pet -Armacost, Information, Planning, and Assessment, University of Central Florida, 12424 Research Parkway, Suite 225, Orlando, Florida, 32826-

3207, [email protected]

Robert L. Armacost, University Analysis and Planning Support, University of Central Florida, 12424 Research Parkway, Suite 488, Orlando, Florida,

32826-3207, [email protected]

Abstract One of the major requirements of todays

employers is for their new hires to have excellent

communication and professional skills. These skills include

writing, speaking, listening, presenting, working in

multidisciplinary teams, engaging in life-long learning, and

exhibiting professional and ethical behavior. These skillshave been clearly identified by the Accreditation Board for

Engineering and Technology as being essential for all

engineering graduates, but tend to be very difficult to teach

and embed in the curriculum. This paper describes how to

structure an introductory course in the major that would

help to teach communication and professional practice skills

in the context of the students chosen major. The objectives

of this course are to provide students with an exposure to the

entire domain of the discipline in order to set the stage for

the remaining curriculum, and to develop the students skills

in, and awareness, sensitivity, and understanding of

professional practice and communication skills.

Index Terms Communication skills, Introductory

engineering course, Professional practice skills

COMMUNICATION AND PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE

Introductory engineering courses in many universities focus

primarily on technical content and do not provide the

connections necessary to put engineering in context within

the entire curriculum [1]. Both academia and industry have

clearly identified the need for engineering students to learn

more than just technical skills. In a 1996 report of The

National Science Foundation [2], education is described to

be more than just an acquisition of facts . A survey of 15

aerospace and defense companies [3] was used to help

identify industry expectations of new graduates with respect

to the Accreditation Board of Engineering and Technology

(ABET) Criteria 2000. It suggested, among other things,

that graduates are expected to have the ability to work inmultidisciplinary teams, have an ability to communicate

effectively, have an understanding of professional and

ethical responsibility, and recognize the need for life -long

learning. More recently, a study supported through theNational Science Foundation found that science,

mathematics, engineering, and technology (SMET)

education programs need to include within their curriculum

competencies such as customer expectations and

satisfaction, commitment to doing ones best, listening

skills, sharing information and cooperating with co-workers,

team working skills, adapting to changing work

environments, customer orientation and focus, and ethical

decision making and behavior [4].

At a large number of universities, communication skillsare taught in isolated classes, separate from the rest of the

engineering curriculum. Other schools have chosen a

writing across the discipline approach, to partner with a

writing center, or to use a writing consultant [5]. As noted

in a recent assessment of engineering writing at The

University of Washington [6], the teaching that was being

done in the stand-alone writing courses was not being

transferred to other writing assignments. In addition, such

communication courses often do not include instruction on

the types of communication that are prevalent in industry

today (e.g., email communication, memos, abstracts,

executive summaries, and presentations).

Regardless of the methods of instruction, the focus is

typically on the development of individual writing skills, but

not on group writing skills. Schultz and Ludlow [7]

emphasize the importance of collaborative or group writing

as a necessary skill for engineers and describe key elementsof effective group writing.

Within engineering courses, the desired communication

and professional practice skills are generally not taught

explicitly; however, students are expected to speak and writewell and to display good professional behavior by the time

they graduate. Students are often given assignments and

projects where these skills are required and they may also be

held accountable (e.g., graded) for doing them well, but it is

unusual for lecture time in an engineering course to be

devoted to communication and professional skill

development. There is a need to make teaching of theseskills more pervasive throughout the curriculum. It is

important that communication and professional skills be

introduced early and reinforced throughout the curriculum.

One approach is to introduce the need for these skills in a

Freshman engineering course, teach the skills in an

introductory course to the particular engineering major,reinforce the skills throughout the major (e.g., adopt a

standard writing text to be used by all faculty in their

courses), and test the skills in the students senior year.

The focus of this paper is on the design of an

introductory course in the major that is intended to be taught


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as a first course in the major in the sophomore or junior year.

We describe how to structure an introductory course in the

major that would help to teach communication and

professional practice. A detailed example of such a course

taught in the Department of Industrial Engineering and

Management Systems at the University of Central Florida is

provided. In the following sections of this paper, we

describe the objectives and philosophy of the course, provide

details of the course content, describe some approaches to

instruction, provide a more detailed example of the course in

Industrial Engineering, and describe our experiences and the

challenges with teaching such as course.

OBJECTIVES OF THE INTRODUCTORY

ENGINEERING COURSE

The primary purpose of the introductory course in the major

is to provide the student with an introduction and exposure

to the fundamentals of the particular engineering discipline

(e.g., Mechanical Engineering, Civil Engineering, Industrial

Engineering, or Electrical Engineering) as well as to teachstudents key elements of the engineering profession. Thekey objectives of the introductory course are to:

Provide students with an exposure to the entire domain

of their chosen engineering discipline,

Develop the students professional and communication

skills,

Develop the students systems analysis and consulting

skills, and

Increase the students awareness of the types of

technical and professional skills that are needed in their

discipline.

These objectives are achieved through a series of lectures,

readings, written homework assignments, cases, and real-world projects.

COURSE CONTENT

The introductory course is designed to expose students to thevarious engineering technical skills that they will need to

develop during their entire program of study and to teach

them some of the professional skills. The content of the

introductory course alternates among three general topic

areas:

Professional development

Systems analysis and consulting skills

Discipline-specific concepts and tools

The following provides a more detailed description of

the content of each of the three topic areas:

Professional Development

The purpose of the professional development component of

the course is to provide instruction on some of the non-

technical or non-discipline-specific skills required within the

students profession. These skills are needed so that the

engineering student will succeed in the workplace. The

following topics have been identified for inclusion:

Life -long learning skills

o Professional organizations and societies

o Conducting library and internet research

Communication

o

Oral communication (informal and formal)o Presentations

o Written communication (email, memos, letters,

abstracts and summaries, proposals, reports)

o Active listening

Ethics and professional behavior

Time and project management

Working in teams

Job search skills

o Resumes and cover letters

o Interviews

Systems Analysis and Consulting Skills

It is helpful to teach students the skills that they will needwhen working on engineering problems early in the

curriculum. Students need to learn how to approach

problem solving and design, and then have several

opportunities to experience that process and be given

appropriate feedback. We have found that students can learn

much about the appropriate steps to solving a problem and

identifying and evaluating alternatives even without the

specific technical skills of their engineering discipline.

Another important part of the systems analysis and

consulting skills component of the course is to make

students more aware of their environment and all of the

places where their engineering discipline is being used or

perhaps should be used. We do this by using the university

as an example and also as a laboratory, since operations in

the university are both accessible and familiar to students.

The following topics are included as part of the systems

analysis and consulting skills component:

Exploring the world around you and identifying the

engineering opportunities

Planning and conducting a systems analysis

o The presenting problem versus the real

problem

o Defining goals and objectives

o Developing performance measures

o Identifying alternatives

o Evaluating alternatives

o Taking action Consulting skills

Developing contracts and proposals

Discipline-specific Concepts and Tools

The content of the discipline-specific concepts and tools

component of the course will depend on the particular

engineering discipline. This component of the course is

intended to provide the students with an exposure to all of


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the major parts of their engineering discipline and also to

provide motivation for the rest of the courses that they will

be taking. The following topics illustrate what might be

included in an introductory course in Industrial Engineering:

History of Industrial Engineering

Production System Design

Production System Control Management

Total Quality Management

Productivity

Operations Research

Decision Sciences

APPROACHES TO INSTRUCTION

Exposing students to the major topics in the discipline can

be challenging. It is difficult to identify an appropriate text

for an introductory course that provides the completebreadth of the discipline at an appropriate level that is not

too trivial, not too detailed, and not boring. An introductory

exposure to the discipline must be a highly satisfying,exciting, and motivational experience for the students. The

text that is selected must be interesting and relatively short,

since it only constitutes about half of the course content. If a

good introductory textbook cannot be identified, special

readings can be assigned to the student. In addition, guest

lectures from various faculty members who are focused in

the particular topic areas of the discipline could also be used.

In this course, the students should receive specific

instruction and gain experience that will help them todevelop skills in communication, develop interviewing and

research skills, understand professional and ethical behavior,

and learn to work in teams. Faculty members from

engineering may find it difficult to teach some of thesetopics and will need to seek assistance.

Teaching communication skills is one of the more

challenging assignments for an engineering faculty member.

In general, engineering faculty are not experts in teaching

communication, although many may be able to detect

grammar and spelling errors. However, grading papers for

grammar and spelling does not constitute teachingengineering communication. Students need to be taught the

appropriate content, structure, and grammar to use for

various types of communications. There are a number of

existing textbooks in technical writing that can be used. We

have found that the paperback book on technical writing by

Finkelstein [8] works very well for this introductory course.An instructor who is uncomfortable teaching communication

may also wish to seek help from a Writing Center or use

communication consultants from the Humanities.

It is important for the students to gain a systems

perspective of engineering problems that includes

considerations of the people affected by the system, theenvironment, and the customer(s). Engineers need to

develop systems analysis and design skills such as

identifying the problem, defining objectives and

specifications, and defining performance measures. An

approach to teaching these skills is to first teach the students

the basic steps to problem solving and design and then have

them experience the process for an open-ended problem. At

the same time as the students learn the steps, the instructor

can also present some of the key consulting skills that are

necessary (e.g., identifying the real problem, communicating

with a client, and developing a proposal and contract).

Many of these consulting steps require written or oral

communication. As a consequence, communication skills

can be taught in parallel with the consulting and problem

solving skills.Students must be able to see a clear linkage among all

elements of the course content and be engaged in practical,

hands-on, and motivating projects. This is particularly

important in introductory courses if one wishes to retain the

student in the engineering discipline. This type of linkage

and engagement has been described as an attached learning

strategy [9] and is an underlying philosophy of the

introductory course that we have developed.

During the course, students skills are developed torecognize engineering problems or opportunities, and

understand the types of technical and professional skills that

are needed to address these problems. We have used variousoperations and processes within the university to serve as

examples of Industrial Engineering opportunities. It is easy

for students to relate to and understand university operations

(e.g., admissions, financial aid, maintenance, computer

services, parking, and transportation) since they have

experienced many of them first-hand. They also become

very engaged in processes that affect them directly. As

students begin to explore some of the problems with various

university systems and are asked to try to come up with

solutions, they quickly realize that they are missing some ofthe critical engineering skills that they need to really solve

the problem. If the instructor carefully chooses the problems

to focus on, this approach can be used to motivate the entire

curriculum for the given discipline.

A DETAILED COURSE OUTLINE FORINDUSTRIAL

ENGINEERING

The Industrial Engineering and Management Systems

(IEMS) Department at the University of Central Florida has

offered a two-credit hour course entitled Introduction to

Industrial Engineering and Management Systems for thepast six years. The course was originally designed to serve

as a potential elective for students outside the discipline and

as a required course for the IEMS students. When first

established, the course had one primary purposeexpose

the students to the discipline and to the IEMS faculty. A

faculty member coordinated the course and various faculty

members taught introductory lectures in the major areas of

Industrial Engineering.

The IEMS department determined that communication

and several other non-technical skills were important


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learning outcomes for the program. Surveys of graduates,

alumni, industry mentors, and employers indicated the

importance of these skills and that our students needed to

improve in these areas. In Fall 2001, the course was

extensively revised to include instruction promoting the

development of many of these skills.

The newly designed course alternated lectures among

the following three content areas: discipline-related content

in Industrial Engineering (IE), the Professional Development

(PD) content, and the Systems Analysis and Design (SA)

content. Three textbooks were chosen to support the three

areas. A paperback book by Hicks [10] was chosen as anintroduction to the IE content, the book by Finkelstein [8]

was used to support the communication component of the

PD content, and a textbook by Block [11] was used to teach

students the SA content and consulting skills. While it

would appear that these were a lot of textbooks to require in

one course, two of the books were required in other courses

in the major as well. The Block book [11] is also used in the

senior year to support the students senior design experience

and the Finkelstein book [8] is a required text for all of theIEMS undergraduate courses. Faculty members in each of

the courses in the major require students to use Finkelstein

as a guide on all written assignments.The course is divided into eight major parts. Each part

consists of several lectures coming from the three content

areas followed by a major communication assignment that is

designed to test both the technical knowledge and

communication skills. Mid-term and final exams are also

used to test students mastery within the three content areas

Table I and described in the sections that follow.

TABLE I

COURSE STRUCTURE AN D CONTENT AREASPart Topic IE PD SA

1 Intro to Industrial Engineering X X

2 Life-long learning X3 Describing processes X X X4 Identifying IE opportunities X X X

5 Feasibility reports X X6 Proposals and contracts X X7 Conducting a study X X8 Presenting results X X

Part 1: Introduction to Industrial Engineering

Lectures:

IE: Introduction to Industrial Engineering and

Management Systems IE: History of Industrial Engineering

IE: Overview of the breadth of Industrial Engineering

showing videotapes created by professional societies.

PD: Principles of proper email communication

Assignment: What is Industrial Engineering?

Students are required to send an email to the instructor

giving a succinct description of Industrial Engineering. The

purpose of the assignment is to test whether students can

make proper use of email and to test the students

understanding of the Industrial Engineering discipline.

Part 2: Life -long Learning

Lectures:

PD: Professional Organizations and Life-long Learning

PD: Self-diagnostic on grammar and spellingAssignment: Industrial Engineering Exploration.

The purpose of this assignment is to encourage the

student to become familiar with some of the journals and

magazines that publish information about Industrial

Engineering, as well as some of the web resources. The

written assignment is used to determine whether the student

can follow written instructions and also as a diagnostic on

grammar and spelling.

Part A: Identify at least 15 journals and magazines that

publish articles related to industrial engineering. Categorize

the journals and magazines as to whether the articles are

primarily theoretical, application, general readership, or acombination. In addition, for each journal or magazine,

indicate whether it is published in electronic form and/or if

abstracts are available in electronic form. Also indicate the

relevant e-mail or home page address.

Part B: From the journals and magazines surveyed,

identify one article dealing with an industrial engineering

problem of particular interest to you. Create a typewritten

report that includes a copy of the abstract, a brief statement

indicating why you selected the article, and a full citation

(i.e., author(s), year, title of paper, journal, volume, issue,

pages) of each article. In addition, the following questions

should be addressed in your write-up: What was the

author(s) major purpose in writing the article? How well did

the author(s) convey this message? What was the major

contribution of the article? Was the article easy to follow?Why or why not?

Part C: Identify the websites for 5 professional

organizations that are related to industrial engineering. List

the web site address for each organization and provide a

brief overview of each organization.

Part 3: Describing Processes

Lectures:

SA: Systems and processes

PD: Writing technical definitions and descriptions of

mechanisms and processes

IE: Production systems design

PD: Writing memos and abstractsAssignment: Process Description.

The student is asked to identify five student processes

and five faculty processes at the university. They are

required to select one and develop a detailed process

description as defined in Finkelstein. The purpose of this

assignment is to provide students with exposure to university

processes and to teach students the proper methods for

documenting processes.


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Part 4: Identifying Industrial Engineering Opportunities

Lectures:

IE: Production systems design

SA: Problem identification

PD: Writing standard memos and abstracts

Assignment: Identifying IE Opportunities.

The purposes of this assignment are to (i) providestudents with practice in writing a standard memo, (ii)

encourage students to actively observe and identify

Industrial Engineering opportunities, and (iii) test whether

students can present and support an opinion in a cogent

manner.

Students are asked to identify the top three problems

(in rank order) at the university that could provide potential

opportunities for an Industrial Engineer. They are asked touse the standard memo format to present and justify their

opinions. In the memo, they must describe each problem

and indicate why each is considered to be an opportunity for

Industrial Engineers. They are asked to clearly justify why

these are the top three and justify the rank ordering. Theyare also required to write the memo in third person.

Part 5: Feasibility Reports

Lectures:

IE: Facilities design

PD: Writing reports

Assignment: Feasibility Report.

The purpose of this assignment is to exercise the

students creativity in facility layout and test understanding

of the three basic types of layouts. In addition, this exercise

is designed to test whether the student understands the

content and structure of a feasibility report. The following

scenario and instructions are used:The Admissions operation is a sequence of steps that is

used to process student applications leading to the student

notification of the admissions decision. A simplified version

of the process includes receipt of the application by mail,

filing and storing the application until all pieces are

received, keying the application into a database, computingthe high school GPA, making an admissions decision,

keying the admissions decision into a database, evaluating

transfer credits and residency, and filing the documents until

the Registrars office takes responsibility. The Admissions

office receives approximately 10,000 applications in a year,

primarily in the fall semester.

There are three general types of employees: file

managers, clerks, and counselors. The file managers are the

only ones who can enter information into the student

database and they can do all other operations except for

admissions decisions. The counselors only make admissions

decisions (and are also the only ones authorized to do this);their remaining time is used to recruit new students. The

clerks can do all operations except for entering information

into the student database and admissions decisions.

Develop three different layouts (arrangements) for the

officeprocess, product, and fixed locationand draw a

rough sketch of each. Also address the following in your

report:

(a) What types of storage facilities are needed?

(b) What types of materials handling issues are there?

(c) What other information would you need to really do this

design?

(d) Which of the three designs do you think would be better

and why?

(e) What information do you think you would need in order

to determine how many employees of each type youwould need?

The report should use the stru cture of a feasibility report (see

page 99 in Finkelstein) for this assignment.

Part 6: Proposals and Contracts

Lectures:

IE: Production systems control

PD: Writing proposals

PD: Working in teams, ethics, and professionalism

PD: Resumes, cover letters, and interviews

Assignment: A Proposal to Conduct a Study.

The purpose of the assignment is for students to gain

experience working in teams and to gain some initial

experience in developing a proposal. This assignment also

requires students to use group communication (writing)

skills. The student responses to Part 4 are used to determine

the focus of the study. In this example, parking was

chosen as the area of focus. The instructor randomly assigns

students into teams of size four to five. An excerpt from the

specific instructions follows.

Your teams are competing for a contract to conduct

baseline study of the parking situation at the university forthe Vice President of Administration and Finance. The goal

of the analysis is to obtain a clear picture of the currentparking situat ion and the work that you propose should

include the specific types of Industrial Engineering analyses

that you would conduct in order to achieve this goal.

Assume that your team will be the project management team

and that the remaining teams would be project personnel

available to conduct the study. You should state explicitly

the responsibility of each of the teams. Assume that you

will have three weeks to complete the baseline study. You

should include resumes for each of you team members.

Part 7: Conducting a Study

Lectures:

SA: Defining goals and performance measures

SA: Identifying alternatives and enhancing creativity

SA: Collecting and analyzing data

IE: Production systems control

Assignment: Conduct Study.

The purpose of the assignment is for the student to gain

additional experience working in teams, and to gain some


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initial experience in collecting data and presenting results.

The students are asked to develop a clearer picture of the

parking situation at the university. The study is

accomplished by conducting five different studies including:

1. a survey/interview of students, faculty, and staff; 2.

observations and photographs at student parking lots, 3.

observations at faculty and staff lots and parking garages, 4.

analysis of institutional data about official and unofficial

parking spaces, and 5. data from Institutional Research on

enrollment projections, class enrollments at various times of

the day. A team of students is assigned to each of these

studies and the management team selected from Part 7 isrequired to coordinate the teams and the results .

Part 8: Presenting Results

Lectures:

IE: Quality control

IE: Management and Total Quality Management

IE Operations Research

IE: Decision sciences and evaluating alternatives

PD: Giving presentations

Assignment: Presentations

The purpose of this assignment is for students to get

practice in giving presentations. Each student is required to

participate in the presentation of the results of the study and

is critiqued by class members and the instructor. The

specific instructions are as follows: Presentations of the

findings are conducted during the last two class periods.

The Management team presents the introduction to the study

(purpose and overall approach) on the first day and the

overall conclusions from the study on the second day. Each

study team presents its own results with Studies 1-3

presented on the first day and Studies 4-5 presented on the

second day. Each study presentation must include adescription of the purpose of the study, research approach

taken, results, and conclusions.

SUMMARY

This paper has described and illustrated the components of

an introductory engineering course in the major that is

focused on exposing students to the dis cipline and on

teaching students communication and professional skills.

The course materials, assignments, and project are

specifically designed to help the students understand the

reasons why they need to take particular courses in theirmajor. The lectures and exercises are designed to teach

students how to communicate, how to approach problem

solving, and what is ethical and professional behavior.

While there are many benefits to offering such a course,

there are also a number of challenges. One of the major

challenges is grading. Teaching a course with major writing

assignments is very labor intensive for the instructor. Each

of the assignments must be carefully graded with written

comments in order for students to learn from their mistakes.

Ideally, resubmissions of the written assignments would be

encouraged to allow the student to demonstrate that she or

he has learned the material after reviewing the instructors

comments. Faculty members in engineering typically are

not trained to teach or grade writing assignments. Since

each of the assignments has both a technical and

communication focus, it may be possible to have two

individuals grade each assignment. For example, a Writing

Center or writing consultant could be used to grade the

communication aspect of the assignment and the engineering

faculty member could focus his or her attention on the

technical portion of the assignment.

We have found that the inclusion of the introductorycourse in Industrial Engineering has enhanced the abilities of

the students throughout their program of study. Students

who have taken the course are displaying better

communication skills in each of their follow-on courses and

appear to be better prepared when they begin their senior

design project.

REFERENCES

[1] Porter, Richard, D. and Fuller, Hugh, "A new 'Contact-Based' FirstYear Engineering Course,"Journal of Engineering Education,Vol. 87No 4., October 1998, pp. 399-404.

[2] National Science Foundation (NSF), Shaping the Future: NewExpectations for Undergraduate Education in Science, Mathematics,Engineering, and Technology, 1996, NSF pp. 96-139.

[3] Lang, James, D., Cruse, Susan, McVey, Francis, D., and McMasters,

John, Industry Expectations of New Engineers: A Survey to AssistCurriculum Designers,Journal of Engineering Education, Vol. 88,No. 1, January 1999, pp. 43-51.

[4] Meier, Ronald, L., Williams, Michael, R., and Humphreys, Michael,

A., Refocusing Our Efforts: Assessing Non-Technical CompetencyGaps,Journal of Engineering Education, Vol. 89, No. 3, July 2000,pp. 377-386.

[5] Walker, Kristin, Integrating Writing Instruction into Engineering

Courses: A Writing Center Model,Journal of EngineeringEducation, Vol. 89, No. 3, July 2000, pp. 369-376.

[6] Plumb, Carolyn and Scott, Cathie, Outcomes Assessment ofEngineering Writing at the University of Washington,Journal of

Engineering Education, Vol. 91, No. 3, July 2002, pp. 333-338.

[7] Schulz, Kirk, H., and Ludlow, Douglas, K., Incorporating GroupWriting Instruction in Engineering Courses,Journal of Engineerin g

Education, Vol. 85, No. 3, July 1996, pp. 227-232.

[8] Finkelstein, Leo, Jr.,Pocket Book of Technical Writing, Boston:McGraw-Hill, 2000.

[9] Yokomoto, Charles, F., Rizkalla, Maher, E., Loughlin, Carol, L., El-

Sharkawy, Mohamed, A., and Lamm, Nancy, P., "Developing a

Motivational Freshman Course in Using the Principle of AttachedLearning",Journal of Engineering Education, Vol. 88 No 1, January1999, pp. 99-106.

[10] Hicks, Philip,Industrial Engineering and Management, New York,McGraw-Hill, 1998.

[11] Block, Peter,Flawless Consulting: A Guide to Getting Your ExpertiseUsed, San Diego: Pfeiffer & Company, 1978.

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Development of Competitive Skills in Future Mechanical