Chemical Engineering Student Perceptions of Communication Development from Participation in Game-Based Activities

Workplace surveys show communication skills are essential to success in engineering practices; however, a large gap has been identified between workplace needs and engineering graduates’ skills. A contributing factor to this could be that engineering programs rarely require students to take courses exclusively focused on developing skills in public speaking, presentation, or technical communication which in combination with students’ attitudes that communication is not necessarily a key skill to engineering can exacerbate the problem. Despite efforts to increase the focus on communication in the engineering curriculum, recent engineering graduates entering the workplace are still reported to be deficient in written and oral communication skills. This work investigates student perception of written and oral communication skills after their participation in game-based activities as a means to determine whether game-based pedagogy could serve as a potential tool to enhance these skills in engineering undergraduates. Game-based learning incorporates game design elements in non-game contexts, balancing subject matter and game play to help players engage in the information being presented, while allowing them to learn how to apply it in real world contexts, such as communication in industry. Game-based communication activities were incorporated into one section of Introduction to Chemical Product Design including 86 chemical engineering undergraduates in the spring of 2015. Three different game-based communication activities were covered with the students. “Professional Slide” was a game-based activity where students acted as employees for a company in distress, explaining to customers in a single slide why a recall had been issued on their product. In the “ROYGBIV” game-based activity, students received cards with a code and had to describe the components of their cards with only oral communication in an attempt to decode their card and solve the class based problem. Finally, “Mystery Liquid” was a gamebased activity where students had to describe an unknown liquid to their team members based on appearance, smell and feel solely through written communication so their team could correctly identify the liquid without ever seeing it. Reflection-based homework assignments were developed to obtain students’ perception of these game-based communication activities as prior research showed that use of these game-based communication activities resulted in positive improvement in both students’ oral and written communication skills. The coding scheme for the reflections was developed using a grounded, emergent qualitative analysis. The reflections were then content analyzed by two analysts. An inter-rater reliability measure based on Cohen’s Kappa was calculated for each game-based activity. The inter-rater reliability for the “Professional Slide,” “ROYGBIV,” and “Mystery Liquid” game-based activities were calculated to be 0.641, 0.647, and 0.597 respectively, reflecting a fair level of agreement. Reflections were also analyzed to determine which themes were more prominent in each game-based activity, whether differences existed in these themes based on student gender, and what that meant for the students’ perceptions of communication. For example, the top three themes for the “Professional Slide” game-based activity were {approach – framing}, {audience perception – understanding/listening}, and {approach – presentation}. When looking at the differences between genders for this game-based activity, the top three themes for females were {approach – framing}, {audience perception – understanding/listening}, and {approach – detail} and the top three themes for males were {approach – detail}, {audience perception – understanding/listening}, and {approach – presentation}. As can be seen by these top themes, there was little variation observed between male and female reflections on the game-based communication activities. Introduction In 1981, two walkways in the lobby of the Kansas City Hyatt Regency Hotel collapsed. In 1986, the Space Shuttle Challenger broke apart 73 seconds into flight. In 1999, the Mars Climate Orbiter entered too far into the Martian atmosphere and disintegrated. In 2003, the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated during re-entry after its 28 th mission. The collapsing walkways killed more than 100 people and injured approximately 200. 1 Both Space Shuttle explosions killed crews of seven and the Mars orbiter explosion cost NASA $125 million. 1,2 These catastrophic events have one thing in common – miscommunication between engineers and other project members. In the hotel walkway disaster, a structural engineer submitted preliminary drawings that were taken to be final from the steel fabricator. 1 Internal flight safety problems were bypassed and miscommunication between engineering and management foolishly launched a spacecraft based on incomplete and misleading information, causing the Space Shuttle explosions. 1 The Mars orbiter disintegrated because of a mismatch in units between ground control and the actual spacecraft. 3 When there is miscommunication between engineers and other individuals involved in projects, catastrophic events can occur. Many people can lose their lives and companies can lose significant amounts of money. These events reinforce the importance of communication within engineering. Along with technical skills, students in the engineering discipline are expected to have proficient communication skills when entering industry. 4 According to a survey of industry representatives, working engineers say they spend over half of their day communicating either through collaborating with other employees or discussing opportunities with customers. 5 Writing, speaking, and drawing are not simply used for passing information along within engineering; these communication techniques are also used to generate and analyze knowledge. 6 For example, a team of engineers are tasked with developing a new laptop computer for Lenovo; members of the team draw their designs on a whiteboard and explain the functionality while other members openly discuss if the designs are feasible, writing down features that are essential in the final design. Technical ideas such as a new laptop design and results from testing those ideas are not useful until and unless they are communicated and discussed. 7 In a survey of recent graduates from the State University of New York at Buffalo, a respondent commented, “An engineer is only as good as his ability to communicate his ideas”. 7 An Engineering Curriculum Task Force study rated effectiveness in communicating ideas as second in importance only to problem recognition and solution skills. In this survey, communication skills were rated more important than mathematics, science, and technical skills. 8 Despite surveys ranking communication skills with high importance, engineering graduates are not meeting industry expectations for communication skills. 7,9,10 In an interview with professionals describing the lack of communication skills within the engineering industry, a respondent stated, “[recent engineering graduates] communication skills are not good, they’re less than not good, they’re really bad. In most cases, they’re not strong communicators and that is a problem because we are trying to get some of our technical people to participate in client presentations”. 4 Another survey response included, “There are a lot of very good technical minds in the workplace, but very few that communicate effectively”. 7 In a survey of electrical engineers, 41% of respondents reported receiving employer-paid training in communication skills. 5 This statistic indicates engineering companies are making investments to train their engineers in a skill in which engineering graduates should already be adequately trained upon graduation. The Society for Manufacturing Engineers named “lack of communication skills” among the top competency gaps in engineering education. 7 As shown by these survey responses, communication skills are important in the engineering industry, yet engineering graduates are not meeting employer communication expectations. Engineering education has been making an effort to close this gap; however, an obvious separation between employer expectations and engineering graduates’ skills still exists. 7,8 “Present Case: Communication in Engineering Education” The 1995 report from the National Board of Engineering Education includes recommendation for a redesign of the engineering curriculum toward a more professional focus with specific attention on instruction in communication. 4 ABET is driven by eleven student outcome measurements, two of which state that students should graduate with an ability to communicate effectively and work productively on teams. 4 To be accredited, a program must show their engineering curriculum meets these standards. Approaches to communication instruction in engineering can include requiring writing or communication courses, collaborating with communication and writing centers, or integrating communication and writing programs within standard engineering curricula. 11 However, it is questionable if this is enough – will one mandatory communication class or collaborating with the writing center for one semester be sufficient in training engineers to have the communication skills employers anticipate? Regardless of pedagogical approach, engineering communication initiatives typically incorporate the teaching of context specific communication skills or communication in the disciplines, which may be too narrow according to Fleury. 12 In 1987, a technical communication program that focused mainly on junior and senior students was initiated at the State University at Buffalo’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Their instruction combined several job-related features originated and proven in the workplace such as information models, quality cont