Engineering Communication An Analytical Method of Teaching Engineers to Communicate |
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| Authors: | Sidney W Wilcox |
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| Affiliation: | Sidney W. Wilcox is Professor of Engineering Cmunciation at Arizona State University, where he came in 1955 after sixteen years of industrial employment at The Boeing Company. His widely used text for this course, now in its second printing, was published in 1962. Professor Wilcox' proposal for a degree in communication technology, officially adopted by Arizona State in 1964, was the first B.S. degree curriculum which combined humanities, engineering, natural science, and business with in-depth study in the four basic communication specialties-writing, editing, graphics, and information science. |
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| Abstract: | Engineering students , even some who have previously lost interest in English, become enthusiastic learners when they are shown that the ability to communicate precisely is a necessary part of engineering. Accepting this thesis, the Engineering School at Arizona State University in 1955 incorporated an engineering communications course into the core of all degree programs. In the fourteen years the course has been offered, it has been successfully completed by about two thousand students, with an average failure of about three percent. This high percentage of completion is attributed to three things: the communication skills developed are related to the work of engineers; the teaching method is analytical; and the student's work is carefully evaluated by the instructor and revised by the student when not acceptable. The instructor is, of course, another prime factor; a few have been unable to teach the course effectively. In addition to other capabilities, the instructor of this course must be willing to accept the fact that he is teaching the course to make a better engineer-not a journalist, orator, or technical writer. The instructor must also have a firm grasp of English grammar and a certain amount of technology, preferably including prior industrial experience related to the work of engineers. |
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