Background: Practitioners, academics, and accrediting boards all recognize the importance of communication to the work of engineers, but ensuring that engineering students graduate with effective communication skills continues to be a challenge for programs. Our project examines this problem within our institutional context, with the goal of serving local needs while extending the literature on engineering communication. Literature review: Prior research identifies communication skill gaps, examines the effectiveness of various approaches to teaching engineering communication, and highlights issues of knowledge transfer. Few studies collect both academic and practitioner perspectives. Research questions: 1. How effectively does the required first-year course provide students with foundational engineering communication skills? 2. How much do students’ communication abilities improve by the time they complete the engineering capstone course in their final semester? 3. To what extent are engineering students graduating with the communication skills they will need to succeed professionally? Research methodology: This study involved technical and professional communication instructors’ analysis of student communication work from two courses: 1. first-year engineering communication and 2. the engineering capstone. The study also included surveys of and follow-up interviews with engineering practitioners regarding the communication skills of capstone students and recent engineering graduates more generally. Results: Student work from the first-year engineering communication course was weak; communication work from the capstone was not substantially stronger, even though students were provided with a detailed template for each assignment. The survey and interviews suggest that practitioners tended to view capstone students’ communication skills favorably but found the skills of new hires who were recent graduates to be weaker. Conclusions: The data emphasize the shortcomings of stand-alone communication courses, issues with knowledge transfer, and the role of institutional contexts.

Technical communicators are expected to work extensively with visual texts in workplaces. Fortunately, most academic curricula include courses in which the skills necessary for such tasks are introduced and sometimes developed in depth. We identify a tension between a focus on technological skill vs. a focus on principles and theory, arguing that we subvert the potential benefits of an education if we succumb to the allure of software. We recommend several classroom practices that help educate students toward greater visual literacy, based not only on recommendations from the research but also from our experience as teachers of visual communication.

This article analyzes the impact of the design of the Medicare handbook and website on individuals' ability to make effective decisions about prescription drug coverage. The article summarizes Medicare Part D, discusses the characteristics of potential enrollees, and provides an overview of document-based decision making. It uses a rhetorical framework to evaluate the Medicare documents as decision-making tools, arguing that design flaws hinder users'understanding, discourage them from taking appropriate action, and negatively shape perceptions of ethos. The article concludes by discussing implications for functional documents more generally, underscoring the importance of a design cycle that is both user-centered and performance-centered.

Scholarly conversation within the field of professional communication increasingly has focused on the practice, research, and pedagogy of visual rhetoric. Yet, visual thinking has received relatively little attention within the field. If our programs produce students who can think verbally but not visually, they risk producing writers who are visual technicians but are unable to move fluidly between and within modes of communication. This article examines the literature and pedagogical practices of visually oriented disciplines to identify strategies for helping students develop the ambidexterity of thought needed for the communication tasks of today's workplace.

Investigates both students’ and instructors’ perspectives on issues dealing with complications of using collaborative groups. Ascertains whether the costs of collaborative writing projects outweigh the benefits. Explores ways in which teachers can maximize benefits and minimize costs. Concludes that collaborative projects are necessary and that problems can be minimized through careful planning and close monitoring.