Integrating workforce communication into senior design

Workforce communication skills are essential to engineers´ job success, but research shows that engineering graduates do not have the level of oral and written communication skills that jobs require. At Georgia Institute of Technology, the results of interviews with engineers, supervisors, and senior executives have been used to integrate workforce communication skills into Industrial Engineering Senior Design. The process used to collect the data is described along with the resulting educational approach. The incorporation of the identified workforce communication skills into the capstone course is then detailed. Preliminary feedback is reported and extensions to other engineering disciplines are discussed.