Background: Research suggests that communication instruction is particularly effective when situated in disciplinary courses. While studies show that this approach improves communication skills, less is known about how it enhances engineering learning. Literature review: Prior work includes approaches to integrating communication into engineering, studies of writing to learn, and explorations of the role of communication in identity development. Research question: How might the integration of communication instruction and practice into undergraduate engineering courses support engineering learning? Methodology: Because little is known about how communication instruction enhances engineering learning, we conducted an exploratory case study of an established integrated program in one European university. Participants included six engineering instructors, five engineering program heads, and six engineering students. Using interviews and focus groups, we explored the engineering-specific gains that faculty and students perceived from integrating communication assignments into engineering courses. Results: Our analysis yielded three salient areas of learning: 1. understanding disciplinary content, 2. selecting important information, and 3. justifying choices. While the first aligns tightly with writing-to-learn research, all three themes, in fact, bridge content learning and disciplinary literacy to enhance students' development as engineering professionals. Conclusions: Communication instruction can potentially support engineering learning through assignments that prompt students to select information in ways that are consistent with both disciplinary values and the needs of stakeholders, and make and justify decisions about approaches and solutions in ways that demonstrate sound engineering judgment.

This article uses activity theory to analyse two different portfolio approaches as tools for programmatic assessment of Integrated Content and Language (ICL) programs. The two approaches include a) a model in which students construct portfolios by selecting artifacts from a range of different contexts and provide reflective commentary, and b) a model in which the portfolio consists of major textual artifacts produced across a design project, with no reflective component. Activity theory provides a tool to explore what these models can offer in terms of an assessment of the integration of content and language in disciplinary contexts, where texts serve to mediate the ongoing work of a discipline. By highlighting the work that texts do in context as well as the access to student meta-knowledge afforded by each portfolio, activity theory provides a means to understand the strengths and limitations of both models. Perhaps most importantly, it points to the need for portfolios to include well-designed reflections that can support both student learning and effective programmatic assessment.

Distributed work is an increasingly common phenomenon in a number of technical and professional settings, and the complexity of this work requires high degrees of knowledge sharing and integration that move beyond assembly-line approaches to collaboration. Since participants in distributed-work settings rely almost exclusively on written and spoken language to mediate their collaborative relationships, professional communication faculty need educational approaches that empower students with language practices designed specifically to support effective teaming in these complex environments. To address this need, we employ discourse analysis and Speech Act Theory to identify these language practices in a case study of two cohorts of distributed, interdisciplinary, and cross-cultural student teams. The findings show correlations between language practices and successful collaboration. These correlations have significant implications for teaching and practice.

This article draws on activity theory, politics of the artifact, and speech act theory to analyze how language practices and technology interplay in establishing the social relationships necessary for globally networked teams. Specifically, it uses activity theory to examine how linguistic infelicities and the politics of communication technologies interplay in virtual meetings, thereby demonstrating the importance of grounding professional communication instruction in social as well as technical effectiveness. That is, students must learn not only how to communicate technical concepts clearly and concisely and recognize cultural differences but also how to use language and choose media in ways that produce the social conditions necessary for effective collaboration in globally networked environments. The article analyzes two case studies—a workplace and a classroom—that illustrate how the mediating functions of language and the politics of technology intersect as mediating tools in globally networked activity systems. It then traces the implications of that intersection for professional communication theory and pedagogy.

Communication has long been a central component of engineering curricula, but recent developments in accreditation, software, and available media, along with rapid increases in cross-functional, global, and virtual teams, have dramatically expanded the nature of communicative practice. In response, faculty in writing and communication programs that support engineers have developed a range of innovative practices. Approaches include expanded research into workplace practices, communication across the curriculum, dedicated classes, and modules tailored to individual courses. This introduction highlights both the drivers and the innovations described in this Special Issue.

As distributed work begins to shift the nature of practice for technical communication professionals in the workplace, faculty need new frameworks to help prepare students for roles that involve negotiating, supporting, and facilitating virtual global collaboration. This paper identifies key areas of metaknowledge appropriate to these new frameworks by synthesizing a review of current scholarship on such collaborations and a case study of students participating in a cross-disciplinary, cross-cultural team project.

Forest management plans, written by natural resource professionals for private landowners, provide a useful mechanism for analyzing documents concerned with communicating information about natural resources. The documents suggest that maintaining a sharp distinction between the professionals and the lay audience leads to stylistic and structural problems that hinder clear communication and mediate against collaborative decision making, even when such collaboration is the goal. This article offers specific mechanisms for overcoming these textual problems.