Assessing Engineering And Technology Students' Abilities To "Communicate Effectively": Overcoming Obstacles

Assessing students’ communication abilities may prove challenging to faculty members in schools of engineering and technology. This piece discusses how faculty members at one institution designed a communication assessment process that took these challenges (lack of confidence, lack of time, and a lack of a perception of benefits) into account. Several of these principles may apply to other institutions as they design programmatic communication assessment. Obstacles encountered in assessing communication abilities Effective oral and written communication abilities – both visual and verbal – have long been essential to the effective functioning of engineers and engineering technologists in the workplace.1 The Accrediting Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) and other external forces have recently begun requiring schools of engineering & technology (E&T) to assess whether students can “communicate effectively” as an outcome of their educations.2 Formally assessing those abilities as outcomes provides a relatively new challenge to many institutions. When asked to assess their students’ technical communication abilities, faculty members in schools of engineering and technology may feel hesitant about doing so for at least three reasons. E&T faculty members may perceive that technical knowledge is separable from • the means used to communicate it3 and therefore believe that their expertise is primarily technical. Also, because many have not been well-trained in communication, they may lack confidence in their competence to assess students’ communication abilities. Assessing students’ written and oral artifacts can be complex and time• consuming, so faculty members may also perceive that they lack time for conducting such assessment well. E&T faculty members may believe that they will experience few rewards or • benefits for the work involved in assessing students’ communication abilities. P ge 837.1