Enhancing Communication Skills In Senior Design Capstone Projects

Most engineering faculty would acknowledge that engineering students do not enjoy writing while at the same time agree that writing skills are tremendously important to the practicing engineer. ABET Engineering Criteria 2000 includes demonstration of communication skills; feedback from industry employers indicates that this is even more important than technical skills. The senior capstone experience provides an excellent opportunity for polishing written and oral communication skills in a manner that is both palatable and successful for engineering students. We are taking advantage of this opportunity in our senior design sequence at the University of Cincinnati in the Electrical & Computer Engineering and Computer Science department. Historically, each senior project was supervised by a faculty member with appropriate technical expertise. All students shared common reporting requirements due at the end of each term. The quality between projects varied greatly and seniors expressed dissatisfaction with inconsistent levels of interaction and feedback from faculty advisors. In order to address both weaknesses, several curriculum modifications were initiated in the Electrical Engineering (EE) and Computer Engineering (CompE) senior capstone courses in Fall 1999. The improvements include a regular weekly class meeting guided by senior advisors (one EE and one CompE professor), emphasis on team projects, and systematic and incremental writing deadlines.