2005 IEEE International Professional Communication Conference Proceedings

0-7803-9028-8/05/$20.00 © 2005 IEEE.

Making Connections to the Workplace: Situating Technical Communications Assignments Within Professional Practice

Marie C. Paretti Virginia Techmparetti@vt.edu

Abstract

This paper draws on research in both technical communication and education to describe a Problem-Based Learning approach to engineering design courses that more authentically engages students in the practice of communicating with specific audiences for specific purposes. By developing a learner-centered classroom in which faculty serve as mentor-managers rather than repositories of knowledge, instructors can develop communication tasks that more closely reflect the way texts function in the workplace. In doing so, they can better prepare students for role that texts play in professional practice and enable them to make decisions accordingly. I include results from pilot sections of capstone engineering design courses to describe the implementation and evaluate the effectiveness of the approach.

Keywords: assignments, engineering communication

Introduction: Resolving the Workplace/Classroom Tension Through Problem-Based Learning

Since at least 1965, when W. Earl Britton first articulated the problem with college assignments as students “writ[ing] the wrong thing, for the wrong reason, to the wrong person, who evaluates it on the wrong basis,”[1] communications faculty have struggled with the inherent tension between the workplace and the classroom. In the workplace, communication is often the critical link between the technical expertise of engineers and the decisions made by others about those projects. Proposals, progress reports, design documents, and similar texts represent engineers’ work to those empowered to act on it, and thus they serve critical functions in the ongoing work of an organization.

Yet in the classroom, communication assignments are easily divorced from functionality; faculty, unlike managers, do not need reports and presentations to make technical decisions; they already know more than their students, so the texts “function” primarily (often only) as a means to evaluate student knowledge and performance. The result is an ongoing struggle to develop pedagogical approaches that effectively build students’ ability to communicate as professionals.

As recently as 2003, research by Deanna P. Dannels pointed to the persistence of this struggle in presentation assignments for a year-long mechanical engineering capstone design course.[2] Dannels found conflicting, often mutually exclusive, representations of audience, student identity, and presentation structure created through both faculty-student interactions (written and oral) about the assignment and faculty assessment of the resulting presentations. Earlier research by Russell [3], Freedman and Adam [4], Freedman, Adam, and Smart [5], Anson and Forsberg [6], and others points to similar disjunctions in writing assignments. As Freedman and Adam explain, “Even in courses where the instructor is directly simulating a workplace task through a factually based case study, the nature of the writing is fundamentally different because of the radical differences between the two rhetorical contexts.” [5] These studies suggest that students face complex transitions when moving from school to work, and their undergraduate communication training does not always bridge the gap.

One strategy for resolving this tension, I would argue, involves not simply designing better assignments, more accurate evaluation rubrics, or more effective lectures, but rather shifting the underlying pedagogical framework. Much of the work in educational research over the last 40 years has centered on moving away from the teacher-

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centered “banking” model to learner-centered classrooms. This move opens up a critical space for truly functional communication, and thus holds the potential to help students learn to communicate in contexts that more closely reflect professional practice. Current work in active learning [7], problem-based learning [8], self-authorship [9], and related topics have created models in which “teacher” moves away from a figure of authority and toward one of coach or mentor. Though the expertise gap remains (faculty do, inescapably, know more about their disciplines than students), research suggests that learner-centered approaches offer students the opportunity to develop richer, more complex understandings of the material at hand, as well as stronger skills in analysis, problem-solving, and lifelong learning.

Though many learner-centered approaches create this opportunity, this study focuses specifically on Problem-Based Learning (PBL) because of its applicability to engineering design courses in particular and its explicit shift of teacher from lecturer to mentor/manager. Over the past decade, PBL has emerged as a successful tool in a range of engineering courses and programs. [10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15] Perrentet, Bouhuijs, and Smits, in particular, provide a thorough evaluation of its uses and limitation in the engineering classroom and their research suggests that, although not appropriate to every course, it is a very effective tool for helping develop students’ engineering abilities.[16]

Most importantly, the shift to learner-centered pedagogies positions teacher and student within a transactional framework that more closely parallels professional practice. When faculty shift from depositing knowledge to mentoring a problem-solving team, the communication required, particularly for long-term projects, lends itself more readily to the kind of transactional exchanges found in professional practice. Mentoring PBL teams, much like managing workplace projects, involves monitoring team progress, tracking individual performance, and locating and addressing problems. Moreover, communication across teams can help spark new ideas, develop creative solutions, or highlight gaps, much as workplace design reviews or departmental meetings might. As a result, student texts can function as tools faculty-mentors use to make decisions about course management, student needs, and related issues. This framework, when

foregrounded, can provide a more authentic opportunity for students to engage meaningfully in communicative action.

Communication as Professional Practice in Capstone Design

Originally introduced in 1969 at McMaster University in Canada [17], PBL typically puts students in small groups to work together to solve problems (usually “real-world” ones) for which they do not possess all the required knowledge or expertise. Under the guidance of a faculty mentor, students more fully define the problem, determine what they need to learn, divide up the tasks, research the necessary information, teach one another the relevant concepts, and use their growing knowledge base to develop solutions. The faculty in these settings do not teach – that is, they do not provide students with disciplinary knowledge. Instead, they help students determine what knowledge the problem requires, suggest strategies for acquiring the knowledge, and ask questions that prompt further exploration.

Over the past two years, this approach has been tested in year-long capstone design courses in two disciplines in a large southeastern state university: Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) and Engineering Science and Mechanics (ESM). The first two years of the study (Year 1 = 2003-04 and Year 2 = 2004-05) have provided pilot data that both confirms the effectiveness of the approach and suggests further revisions to assignments and practices. Using those revisions, the study will continue through May 2007 to fully test the approach. In both classes, I am a technical communications professor team-teaching with an engineering professor. Importantly, however, the “teaching” is not split in terms of disciplinary boundaries; I routinely address the engineering design process and project management as well as communication concerns, while the engineering faculty also address both communication and technical issues, reflecting a fully collaborative approach to the courses.

Course Description and Approach In each course, students work in teams of 2-4 on open-ended design projects in their discipline, with each team guided by a faculty advisor (typically not one of the course professors). Students select design projects for the course in a variety of ways. In MSE, students begin preliminary planning

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during the spring of their junior year through a 1-credit professional development course; they learn about faculty research, share their own interests with one another, and begin talking to faculty about possible projects. The students form preliminary teams and sketch out a project idea that semester, though they are not bound to those decisions and at least half of the Year 2 groups changed plans during the intervening summer. Projects from Year 2 include developing a more effective method to test LEDs for potential use in solid state lighting, comparing tensile strength for composite materials to the strength of individual fibers as a first step towards more accurately modeling the impact of processing, and determining the feasibility of using high-temperature superconductors in multilayered ceramic packages.

In ESM, Year 1 students selected projects at the beginning of the course through a similar process, though we solicited project ideas from ESM faculty at the start of the semester. In Year 2, we presented the students with a list of projects associated with national or international contests; half the teams chose a contest problem from the list while half selected a project on their own. Sample projects include developing a biomechanical arm using electroactive polymers as muscles, constructing a composite catapult, and redesigning testing equipment to verify the tensile strength of a proprietary composite.

The courses are designed as capstone experiences in which students bring all of their previous learning to bear on the problem at hand. Yet as in many capstone projects, the students do not enter the course knowing everything they need; each project typically requires substantial research to acquire new knowledge and skills to supplement previous classroom learning.

Within this context, the engineering faculty members and I serve as mentors and project managers rather than teachers in the “banking” sense, and the communication tasks proceed accordingly. The courses meet twice a week in the fall as students develop and plan their projects and begin work. In the spring, we meet only once a week as students spend a much larger percentage of time on the projects themselves.

In the fall, class time includes some lecture/discussion regarding project planning,

proposal development, presentation strategies, and reporting results; the rest of the time is focused on students presenting their work in both formal and informal settings and soliciting feedback from their peers and faculty. In the spring, the course consists almost entirely of student discussions about their work, again in both formal and informal presentations, though we also spend some time discussing the final report and presentation to the entire department.

Over the course of two semesters, each team communicates through a full range of assignments:

• Project proposals designed to demonstrate a) that the problem is appropriate for a capstone design course, as determined by ABET, and b) that the team adequately understands the problem, has defined measurable deliverables, and has developed a work plan likely to lead to success

• Written and oral progress reports designed to a) bring both the faculty and the other teams up to date on the project’s progress, b) identify and overcome obstacles to insure project success, and c) identify work done by individual team members for evaluation purposes

• Final written reports submitted to both the course faculty and advisors, designed for an appropriate professional context (client design report, journal article, feasibility study, etc.)

• Final oral reports presented to the entire department (all faculty as well as the rising junior class are invited) to present the project results in a way that demonstrates successful completion of the course goals.

In every case, these texts serve critical functions within the course itself. Accordingly, both the assignments and the grading rubrics clearly reflect how we as course coordinators use the texts to manage and evaluate both the projects and the students’ own learning. In this respect, we do not attempt to erase the tension between how documents might function in the workplace and how they function in the classroom. Instead, we foreground that tension as we talk about the multiple ways we as instructor-managers need to act on the information contained in the documents and presentations. The goal of this approach is to

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emphasize that texts are not defined by specific formats, but rather to emphasize that formats arise out of the particular function(s) a given text serves.

Through both discussion and practice, then, students come to understand that texts are not simply busywork assigned because “it’s good for them.” Rather, texts are tools used to share and manage information and are thus inextricable dimensions of the work of engineering. For example, oral progress reports are treated as sites for discussion among both faculty and peers, with students expected to solicit feedback from their classmates on design ideas and potential problems; those in the audience are expected to contribute as colleagues. Written documents are treated as tools for planning, management, and analysis both for the team and for the project managers (faculty).

This transactional approach plays out in the way the assignments are constructed as well as the way they are evaluated. The proposal assignment, for example, defines the role of senior design projects in ABET evaluations, and asks that students clearly address how their proposed project meets various ABET criteria. Similarly, we explain that at the end of the project, they must stand up in front of the entire department to present their work, in effect “proving” themselves ready to graduate. As course instructors, we have a vested interest in their success in those presentations. If, in the end, they look bad, then we look bad and departmental criticism falls on our desks. In light of that, the proposal’s deliverables and project plan help us evaluate the likelihood of that success.

In the same way, when assigning written progress reports, we focus on the way that we as course instructors use those reports – they help us evaluate the project’s progress to make sure it will be completed on deadline, they identify specific problems that we as managers need to address (including everything from theoretical gaps to delays in obtaining supplies), and, for grading purposes, they help us evaluate both the group’s overall progress and approach and the role and contribution of each team member.

Importantly, though, when discussing these assignments, we continue to use a PBL framework, presenting the communication tasks themselves as problems to solve rather than formats to follow. For example, when we introduce the progress reports, we first ask students to consider our goals

as course instructors, to describe what kinds of information we might need in a progress report to achieve those goals, and to consider organizational structures that might be appropriate in that context. The ensuing “lecture” on progress reports thus becomes more of a summary of the preceding discussion; the written assignment for ESM students supports this approach by explaining:

“The goal of these reports is twofold: 1) to help us manage the projects - to make sure you're on track, you have all the resources you need, your problems and questions are being addressed, etc. and 2) to help us evaluate your work this semester in terms of your ability to apply mechanics to the project and to complete tasks in a timely manner.”[18]

In each case, we evaluate the texts based on how successfully they enable us to do our job. Each assignment comes with a detailed set of evaluation criteria that reflect this use value. Criteria for the progress reports, for example, include:

• Does it identify all problems encountered, explain the solutions, and ask for assistance if needed?

• Does it summarize both what you should have done and what you actually have done?

• Does it provide details on the work completed to date on each task, including responsible party, duration, and outcome?

Each criterion relates directly to the uses discussed in class.

Similarly, the grading rubric for the oral proposal, a critical design review in which both faculty and class members were invited to comment on the proposed project, include criteria such as:

• Does the organization clearly reflect the speaker's goals (i.e. creating a positive impression of the project while soliciting feedback)?

• Does the organization effectively meet the needs of the audience (enabling them to provide feedback on all phases of the project)?

• Does the content provide sufficient details about the project plan to allow the audience to offer substantive feedback?

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In each case, these criteria are linked to what we as managers and evaluators actually need to do with the information provided by text in question.

Moreover, as instructor-managers we actually use proposals to help identify projects that will succeed and locate weak points in more tenuous projects.

Similarly, we use written and oral progress reports to remain up-to-date on each project and track progress. Feedback both in class and on the documents will include comments both about the effectiveness of the communication and about the project itself. On a progress report, for example, I am just as likely to comment on the test matrix students set up for evaluating a design as I am to comment on the clarity of their explanation. Because students are working on open-ended design projects, we as faculty do not have the “answers” written down somewhere; instead, we rely on student texts about their work to keep us informed, and draw on our own experience as researchers to help guide their thinking as their projects unfold.

Equally important, information itself migrates from text to text as the projects develop, and students learn to use their own texts as tools to help them succeed. For example, the project plan developed in the proposal becomes a Gantt chart updated in each progress report, which in turn serves as the basis for a discussion of changes in the project scope and or schedule. The schedule provides an overarching framework not only for helping us track student progress, but for helping students themselves organize their work. Similarly, sections dealing with work completed in the progress reports provide the basis for discussion sections in the final report as students analyze their findings and make decisions about their projects based on preliminary findings. This kind of ongoing project tracking and analysis reinforces the kinds of functions texts serve within professional practice.

Pilot Study Results: Years 1 & 2 To evaluate the effectiveness of this approach, I am using four tools: 1) student surveys on the usefulness and value of the course assignments; 2) teacher-researcher observations of classroom and conference discourse; 3) interviews with students (beginning May 2005); 4) independent outcomes assessments on student work (also beginning May 2005). In addition, I plan to maintain contact with future graduates to examine the transferability of

classroom skills to the workplace. The study has received human subjects approval from the university’s Institution Review Board, and students whose texts are cited have signed release forms. The data gathered to date includes both classroom observations and student surveys from the 2003-04 class and the fall semester of the 2004-05 course. In the surveys, students were asked to rate the usefulness of each assignment with respect to completing their projects and the value of each assignment with respect to their overall professional development. In addition, they were asked to comment on why they considered the assignments useful/not useful and valuable/not valuable. Small survey populations (16 ESM students, 17 MSE students for 03-04; 16 MSE & 17 ESM students for 04-05) make it difficult to calculate statistically significant differences among assignments in the pilot data; in addition, a single low number significantly skews average results at this point in the study. Still, the results provide a basis for understanding how students use and perceive the assignments. On a scale of 1-5, with 5 being the most useful/valuable, students rate the usefulness of all assignments at 3.9, and the professional value of the assignments at 4.2, suggesting that not only do most of them recognize the kinds of textual demands they will face in the workplace, but that they also are beginning to use texts as tools to further their engineering work. Most notably students found that the textual exchanges with both the course faculty and their classmates (through the oral presentations) helped them more fully define the problems, develop reliable work plans, and devise strategies for overcoming particular design problems they encountered.

Sample student comments also reflect the sense of professionalism that develops through the course:

• “…we were given hints about what is expected in the professional world, like … who our audience is, tone, etc. and it just makes the professional world a little less scary.”

• “Generally, I interpreted the entire class as how things would be done in the real world.”

• “These are obviously things that will have to be done in our professional careers.”

Moreover, students’ texts reflect their growing ability to adapt documents and presentations to the

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needs of their audience. The 2004 Fall Report provides the clearest indication of this growth. The report itself is a kind of hybrid genre – more than a progress report, but less than the final report because the project is only one-third to one-half complete. As faculty, we use the report to gauge each team’s understanding of their project, their technical skills, their time management and progress, and individual contributions to the team effort. We made these uses clear to the students, and although we provided clear structures for both the proposal and the progress reports, we did not prescribe an organization pattern for this report. Yet almost every team developed a structure that effectively summarized the overall work completed and reflected individual task progress over the course of the semester. That is, they effectively adapted their documents to our intended uses.

Future Research

As noted, the results of the pilot study have resulted in changes to the rubrics, assignments, and class discussions (including changes to be implemented for spring 2005). Beginning in 2006-07, students will also be asked to complete reflective assignments that discuss their composing process; these reflections will help us evaluate their ability to match texts to needs and constraints. The study will continue through 2007 as students move through a fully integrated three-year communications curriculum. In addition, beginning with the Spring 2005 semester, results from these pilot classes will be compared to data from capstone design courses in other departments that use alternate pedagogical approaches.

Conclusions

Pedagogical approaches influenced by learner-centered theories provide discipline-based faculty with opportunities to reposition themselves as users rather than simply graders of student texts. This shift can create increasingly authentic communication situations that engage students not in the formats of a given professional organization, but in the practice of creating and disseminating information to professionals who in turn use that information for specific tasks under a set of larger institutional constraints. By adapting approaches such as problem-based learning, faculty in engineering courses (or any discipline specific courses) have the opportunity to design

assignments that teach students the principles involved in developing documents and presentations to meet specific audience needs. In doing so, we can move from teaching “writing” and “speaking” as abstract skills to teaching “communication” as a transactional process integral to professional life, one in which other people use the information communicated to perform tasks connected to their own jobs.

Though this approach is particularly useful in courses in which students approach open-ended problems and faculty can more readily serve as “project managers” rather than bank depositors, learner-centered teaching approaches provide opportunities to extend this model to a range of other courses, based on the following guidelines for assignment design:

• Create communication tasks that reflect faculty needs with respect to both managing student projects and assessing student learning. Rather than eliding or ignoring the sometimes contradictory aims of school and work, design assignments that explicitly embrace them.

• Write and teach those assignments in ways that make those needs and any associated constraints explicit to students, detailing both why faculty need the information and how they plan to use it.

• Actively engage students in the process of structuring and organizing documents to address the specific needs and constraints of the audience (faculty) and course.

• Develop grading rubrics that explicitly rely on how well the texts meet those needs.

Such guidelines mean that students may not write proposals or progress reports that strictly follow the textbook formula; faculty do have needs different from project managers. But project managers in one company have different needs from those in another company, and no formula will apply in any case. Instead, what assignments can do is help students make the vital connection between text and use, between themselves as information suppliers and their audience as information users. Such approaches not only incorporate the traditional rhetorical triad of audience, context, and purpose, but they make that triad a living part of the course environment.

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References

[1] Britton, W. E., “What Is Technical Writing,” College Composition and Communication, vol. 16, no. 2, pp. 113-116, 1965.

[2] Dannels, D. P., “Teaching and Learning Design Presentations in Engineering: Contradictions between Academic and Workplace Activity Systems,” Journal of Business and Technical Communication, vol. 17, no. 2, pp. 139-169, 2003.

[3] Russell, D. R., “Rethinking Genre in School and Society: An Activity Theory Analysis,” Written Communication, vol. 14, no. 4, pp. 504-554, 1997.

[4] Freedman, A. and C. Adam, “Learning to Write Professionally: ‘Situated Learning’ and the Transition from University to Professional Discourse,” Written Communication, vol. 10, no. 4, 395-427, 1996.

[5] Freedman, A., C. Adam, and G. Smart, “Wearing Suits to Class: Simulating Genres and Simulations as Genres,” Written Communication,vol. 11, no. 2, pp. 193-226, 1994.

[6] Anson, C. M. and L. L. Forsberg, “Moving Beyond the Academic Community: Transitional Stages in Professional Writing,” WrittenCommunication, vol. 7, no. 2. pp. 200-231, 1990.

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[10] Cline, M. and G. J. Powers, “Problem Based Learning via Open Ended Projects in Carnegie Mellon University’s Chemical Engineering Undergraduate Laboratory,” Frontiers in Education Conference, vol. 1, T3F, pp. 350-354. Available:

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/tocresult.jsp?isNumber=14040&page=5

[11] Fink, F. K., “Integration of Engineering Practice into Curriculum – 25 Years of Experience with Problem Based Learinging,” 29th ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference, vol. 1, pp. 11a2-7 – 11a2-12, 1999. Available: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/tocresult.jsp?isNumber=18076

[12] LaPlaca, M.C., W. C. Newstetter, and A. P. Yoganathan, “Problem-Based Learning in Biomedical Engineering Curricula,” 31st

ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference,vol. 2, pp. F3E-16 - F3E-21, 2001. Available: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/tocresult.jsp?isNumber=20803&page=7

[13] McIntyre, C., “Problem-Based Learning as Applied to the Construction and Engineering Capstone Course at North Dakota State University,” 32nd ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference, vol. 2, pp. F2D-1 – F2D-6, 2002. Available: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/tocresult.jsp?isNumber=24586&page=3

[14] Johnson, P. A., “Problem-Based, Cooperative Learning in the Engineering Classroom,” Journalof Professional Issues in Engineering Education and Practice, vol. 25, no. 1, pp. 8-11, 1999.

[15] Kellar, J. J., W. Hovey, M. Langerman, S. Howard, L. Simonson, L. Kjerengtroen, L. Stetler, H. Heilhecker, L. Arneson-Meyer, and S. D. Kellogg, “A Problem-Based Learning Approach for Freshman Engineering,” 30th ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference, vol. 2, pp. F2G-7 – F2G-10, 2000. Available: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/tocresult.jsp?isNumber=19360&page=1

[16] Perrenet, J. C., P. A. J. Bouhuijs, and J. G. M. M. Smits, “The Suitability of Problem-based Learning for Engineering Education: Theory and Practice,” Teaching in Higher Education, vol. 5, no. 3, pp. 345-358, 2000.

[17] Barrows, H. S., “Problem-Based Learning in Medicine and Beyond: A Brief Overview,” NewDirections for Teaching and Learning, no. 68, pp. 3-12, 1996.

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[18] Paretti, M. C. and J. J. Lesko, “ESM 4015-4106: Creative Design – Progress Reports.” Available at http://www.esm.vt.edu/design/ProgressReports.htm. Accessed 23 March 2005.

About the Author

Marie C. Paretti is an Assistant Professor of Engineering Education at Virginia Tech. She directs the Engineering Communications Program for Materials Science and Engineering, and Engineering Science and Mechanics. The program spans sophomore, junior, and senior courses in each discipline and provides integrated instruction in technical communication skills, project management, interpersonal communication, ethics, and related topics. Her research interests include the role of communication in engineering design, student authorship in technical communication, and assessment of communication skills.

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