Workplace communications skills and the value of communications and information use skills instruction-engineering students´ perspectives

Studies indicate that communications and information-related activities take up a substantial portion of an engineer´s work week; therefore, effective communications and information use skills are one of the key engineering competencies that recent graduates of engineering programs are expected to possess. Feedback from industry rates communications and information use skills high in terms of their importance to engineering practice; however, this same feedback rates the communications and information use skills of entry-level engineers low. Missing from current discussions of communications and information use skills and competencies for engineering students is a clear explanation from the professional engineering community about what constitutes “acceptable and desirable communications and information norms” within that community. To gather adequate and generalizable data about communications and information skills instruction and to provide a student perspective on the communications skills of engineers, we undertook a national study of aerospace engineering students in March 1993. The study included questions about the importance of certain communications and information skills to professional success, the instruction students had received in these skills, and perceived helpfulness of the instruction. Selected results from the student study are reported