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Communication Mechanics Episode 1: The Webb Communication Program Goals and Tenets
82 Plays9 months ago
In this inaugural episode, podcast host Dr. Jill Fennell sits down with Dr. Amit S. Jariwala, Director of Design and Innovation at the Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering to discuss the Goals and Tenets of the Webb Communication Program.
Show Notes and Timestamps:
- Introduction, meeting the host and guest: 00:00
- Webb Communication Program Goals: 03:45
- Program History and Purpose: 06:32
- Program structure and scaffolding: 08:28
- Program Core Tenets 11:58
- Implicit Task 1: Balancing Cognitive Load and Content: 18:34
- Implicit Task 2: Determining what counts as information: 21:34
- Implicit Task 3: Determining the actionable threshold: 22:38
- Implicit Task 4: The Trustworthiness Threshold: 25:49
- Implicit Task 5: Understanding Genre: 28:23
- Situational Learning: 33:26
- Audience Avatars: 36:52
- Situational Learning: 33:26
- Tenets’ reflection of Engineering Students’ Needs: 39:49
- Program’s alignment with Industry Expectations: 42:39
- Appropriateness and Responsiveness in different learning scenarios: 45:03
- Working with GTAs and TAs on giving communication skills feedback: 47:24
- Communication and success in engineering careers: 49:17
- Advice and information for incoming students: 51:09
- Unique features of program: 53:31
- Student Takeaways from podcast episode: 54:14
___
This podcast was edited by Dr. Lee Hibbard, Lecturer in Technical Communication at the University of Michigan school of Engineering.
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Transcript
Introduction to Communication Mechanics Podcast
00:00:10
Speaker
Welcome to Communication Mechanics. I'm Jill Fennell, the Frank K. Webb Chair in Communication Skills at Georgia Tech's Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering. In each episode, we'll explore how communication shapes the success of engineers, researchers, and industry professionals. Join us as we share stories of triumphs, challenges, and the strategies that fuel success.
00:00:34
Speaker
Whether you're a seasoned pro, an aspiring student, or simply passionate about engineering, listen as we demystify compelling communication in the world of mechanical engineering.
Goals of the Web Communication Program
00:00:54
Speaker
In this inaugural episode, we're diving into the heart of what this podcast is all about, effective engineering communication and the web communication program. We'll be discussing the goals and guiding principles of the program, why effective communication is essential in engineering and beyond, and how this program aims to equip students with the skills they need to succeed.
00:01:17
Speaker
I'll be your host today and in future episodes. My name is Dr. Jill Fennell and I am the Frank K. Webb Academic Professional Chair in Communication Skills. As such, I oversee the implementation of communication skills within the engineering curriculum at the Woodruff School here at Georgia Tech. From designing outcomes to scaffolding learning across four years of education, my goal is to support the school's mission to create engineers capable of evoking change.
Industry Insights with Dr. Amit S. Jarawala
00:01:47
Speaker
I'm joined today by Dr. Amit S. Jarawala, the Director of Design and Innovation at the Woodruff School. Dr. Jarawala develops and maintains industry partnerships to support experiential, entrepreneurial, and innovative learning experiences within the academic curriculum of the school, particularly within the capstone design course.
00:02:08
Speaker
He directs the operations of the Institute-wide Georgia Tech Capstone Design Expo, which highlights projects created by over 2,000 Georgia Tech seniors every year. Thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you Jill for having me. I'm excited to be here and especially being a part of your inaugural episode.
00:02:27
Speaker
Thanks. Well, I really wanted to invite you to join me today because you teach the capstone course and you work with industry professionals. So you really have a vision of where our students need to be to be industry ready. Awesome. Yeah, I was super excited to have you join the school last year. And I'm really excited about what all the things you will bring to the school. um As you mentioned, my role is quite unique in the school that I get to work with a lot of students, a lot of faculty, but most importantly, a lot of folks of industry.
00:02:57
Speaker
And that's where I get much of the real world feedback of what our graduates are doing going out of Georgia Tech and the kind of impact they're having and the kind of skills they would need to be more successful.
Importance of Communication in Engineering
00:03:08
Speaker
And I think communication skills is the number one thing that everyone talks about, not just investors or entrepreneurs or companies that recruit our engineers. I'm really glad to be here.
00:03:21
Speaker
This entire podcast is about engineering communication and generally I'll be interviewing alumni, students, other faculty, people in industry. But today I really wanted us to focus on what we're trying to do here at the Woodruff School. How we're developing this web communication program and why we're developing it in the way that we are. in order to give the students learning experiences that we think that they need to have. So I feel like over this past year collectively me and you as well as our counterparts and a lot of the other classes that have communication components have negotiated
00:03:58
Speaker
what we really see to be the primary goal of the web communication program. And to me, that has come to be to create engineer communicators who can enable decision makers by anticipating the types of decisions that need to be made and how the audience wants to be able to use the information so that they can design ideally appropriate communications. Would you agree with that?
00:04:22
Speaker
Oh, absolutely. I think we in the virtual school take pride in saying that we graduate engineers will go out to change the world. There'll be change makers and most importantly, leaders. What do leaders do? They influence change, right? So the way you could influence change is by being able to effectively share your message with a wider audience. And so I think it's extremely important that as much as the focus we have on technical skills,
00:04:51
Speaker
we balance it with these additional skills like communication skills. So they are able to convey the importance of the technical content of their message.
Contextual Communication: Beyond 'Good' Practice
00:05:01
Speaker
Right. And you use a key word there that I think is really important for communication, which is effective. Because one of the things that I tell students is that really there's no such thing as good communication. There's only effective communication. And effective communication is that which is maximally appropriate for each situation.
00:05:19
Speaker
How do you think the engineering students have responded to that so far? Yeah, I think it's important for them to realize that. And one thing you will notice from Georgia Tech students, excellence is something they strive for. And sometimes when it comes to excellence, you kind of get confused with profession. And that leads to assuming that there is one excellence or perfection metric you have to achieve.
00:05:43
Speaker
to kind of get an A in the class. So maybe there is one perfect way to communicate to everyone. But the reality is there is always an effective way to talk to a specific audience. ah I teach design and so I think about designing for a customer, designing for a user. And I think the same approach has to be put into communication where you are thinking about who is going to receive that message.
00:06:09
Speaker
and then crafting your strategy to be more effective there, it's not one option or one way that works for everything. Exactly. And I think that this approach um is also something that has helped us have a lot of support. And one of the reasons why we are lucky to get to have a communication program within our engineering school.
Origin and Vision: Frank K. Webb's Influence
00:06:31
Speaker
So why was the program established and what does what needs does it aim to address?
00:06:37
Speaker
I'd love to talk a little bit about Frank K. Webb. He was a visionary alumni from the Woodruff School. He really recognized the importance of training engineers to communicate. And his gifts is what set up my position and the program. Actually, Dr. Jeff Donnell held the Frank K. Webb academic professional chair and communication skills from its inception till his death in 2022.
00:07:06
Speaker
In 1990, Dr. Donnell was hired by the Woodruff School to address what the school administration perceived as a critical need to improve the writing skills of the mechanical engineering students. His approach was the concept of writing across the curriculum.
00:07:24
Speaker
rather than teaching communication skills in isolation, actually implementing them where the students are going to need to use them. According to Bill Wefner, former chair of the Woodruff School, an article in the early 1990s in the school's print publication, Megatech, about Jeff and the writing program that he was initiating caught Mr. Webb's eye.
00:07:46
Speaker
Mr. Webb sent in a check for $10,000 and told the school bluntly that this was the best engineering education innovation he had ever seen. This involvement evolved into the endowment that we now have to support the Webb Communication Program.
00:08:03
Speaker
Awesome, I'm really happy to hear this this history that you shared and it's so good to see the transition now that it started with we need to teach better writing skills to now saying we need engineers who can communicate effectively where writing is a critical essential component but it is not the only component. So I'm glad to see that that we are bringing that change moving forward. I think we're very lucky to be able to scaffold communication training across all four years of our students' education here. That way, at the beginning, we can focus on things more simple just by transferring the effective strategies they already know from maybe an English class like
00:08:47
Speaker
clarity. You need to have a main point. This main point needs to be supported by reasons. Those reasons need to be
Real-World Skills: The Capstone Design Expo
00:08:53
Speaker
supported by evidence. That evidence needs to be analyzed and explained and then tied back to the main point. So I love that we actually have the time here because of the way the program is set up that we can focus on maybe simplistic things like that in a class like 1670 and then in a class like yours they can do much more complicated technical writing, such as the design reports that they do for your class and something that I think perhaps is even harder than that, communicating your incredibly complicated engineering project to the public.
00:09:27
Speaker
Exactly and I'm really glad that here we have this opportunity to run this capstone design expo where we require more or less students to be in front of the public where they are not only just learning how to present to maybe an expo audience because we do get industry advisors or alumni board who come as judges But there are also many people who are just there because maybe their son or daughter is getting admitted to church or maybe they are thinking what engineering is all about. And so we get people, the real public, from all walks of life come to the Expo. And that's really a good challenge for students to have to learn how to understand the
00:10:11
Speaker
the user the end user of the message in real time and tweak your messaging. So I'm really glad that we have that option today. Now what we need to work on is probably making them more competent so they are more comfortable and effective when they're talking with the audience.
00:10:28
Speaker
I think that's another beauty of the long-term program that we have here as well. And the more that we reinforce these concepts throughout, the more you'll see change in those students. Because the way that we're able to scaffold now, we can we can focus again on transfer in earlier classes like 1670. And then when they get to your class, the final capstone class, they have a real world experiential learning experience.
00:10:56
Speaker
But we help them get from transferring basic writing concepts to communicating in real-world scenarios through scenario-based learning, which um I've found to be really helpful to get students to understand that effective communication is all about appropriateness and that they need to be communication decision-makers.
00:11:19
Speaker
Absolutely. I think students pick engineering primarily because they want to see the impact. It's right there. right You apply physics, you apply chemistry, sciences to see something work and so it's very very much needed that we create a scenario-based learning experience because they are used to expecting that. They don't want to learn just theory for the sake of theory. They want to see how can I apply this into something that matters. So if the scenario-based learning provides that opportunity where they can envision who their end user is and then design accordingly.
Role of the Technical Communicator
00:11:56
Speaker
Exactly. The next thing I'd like to talk about is what we've come to define as the core tenet of the program. And again, I feel like it took us almost a year to really decide what we were all going to agree on. But I'm going to say a sentence, which is that the technical communicator's job is to transfer information to their audience with the smallest cognitive load while still being trustworthy and actionable.
00:12:20
Speaker
And I love the brilliance of this sentence because it captures in essence sense what we want our graduates to be able to do. You have to think again of the audience but it also gives an additional step of how to create your message that you think of reducing the cognitive load, but at the same time not oversimplifying or making it sound partially insulting or disrespectful, but meeting the audience where they are. And I think that's that's very important, whether it's in teaching or communication or anything.
00:12:57
Speaker
You have to meet your audience where they are and that's what this aspect of trustworthy brings to the table. But engineers also get things done. Their idea is to create a solution that solves a problem. You can only get things done if you can communicate in a way that results into something that's being actionable. So the recipient can make a decision of where they should go.
00:13:20
Speaker
And that's that's really the the brilliance of the sentence that I like is design communication that has the lowest cognitive load while still being trustworthy and actionable. It it it's clearly speaks to this idea of optimizing and being effective and not that there is just one arbitrary metric that you achieve all the time. Right.
00:13:42
Speaker
and I love this sentence, but I do think that it can be a little misleading at times because there are some implicit tasks that this sentence encapsulates that I think we need to break down. And and I think most of these tasks revolve around the fact that the person who gets to decide what cognitive load is appropriate, how much one needs to be trustworthy and how much a communication is actual is not the speaker, not the communicator, not the students, it is the audience.
00:14:15
Speaker
Exactly. And if you think again from a design standpoint, because I teach design, a common term in design is user centered design or human centered design. And all that revolves around is understanding who is the end user of your product. So we apply those skills when we are designing products, mechanical products or systems or solutions.
00:14:37
Speaker
And what you're proposing here is very similar to that, except that now your design output is the message and the delivery, right? So it's, in a way, it's the same approach that you empathize with the end user here. It's the audience that's going to receive your message. So I think it's very important. Well, one of the things that I tell students is whether we want to be or not,
00:15:01
Speaker
If you're the one in the lab, if you're the one in the studio, then you're an information designer because you created new information. And the only way that that's going to get dispersed is through you. Now you might not be a very forward thinking information designer, but that is the information that exists that will or will not have an influence regardless of how much care you put in into designing it.
00:15:30
Speaker
I like that you use the term information designer because that is a refreshed outlook to importance of communication skills because historically it was always it's a writing class or it's a speaking class and not about, this is about you being a designer, not a product designer, not a systems designer necessarily, but an information designer. So I really like that articulation.
00:15:56
Speaker
It's also one of the ways in which you can kind of think about perhaps the bit of the humanistic element that we have to have in engineering. Because I'm a sincere believer that if you care about what it is that you do, and I see our students, they're so excited, they care so much.
00:16:15
Speaker
about getting the right measurements in lab or creating the machine and design that does exactly the thing that they want it to do in the best way possible. If you actually care, then being able to share that with others matters and it helps accentuate that care and spread it to others. I think one thing I could add why it might be a little challenging for students is engineers.
00:16:42
Speaker
when they show care, they show care in multiple ways, but when they are designing, they are designing for inanimate objects, right? Things which are not alive, so they know how they function.
00:16:54
Speaker
humans, you cannot predict how they function. And so designing for how this cup would stand on this table is the table strong enough. you can You know the material properties of the table, you can design it. But with humans, it's a complex thing. There's this whole body of psychology that has evolved. And engineers are not necessarily exposed to it, and they don't need to be necessarily exposed to it completely.
00:17:19
Speaker
But they need to recognize that at the end of the day, your impact is limited to the amount of people you influence. It's not dependent on just this fancy gizmo that you made. If no one uses it, it's worthless.
Designing Usable Information
00:17:35
Speaker
And so why would anyone use it? Why would anyone trust that it will do what you're saying to do? Depends on, are you articulating the importance of it? And so I feel like that's that's very necessary that they design products or systems, but they also learn to design their own information. Right. And while I'm sure it'd be great if we all had more of a background in psychology,
00:17:59
Speaker
What we can do is make assumptions about our audience based on what we know that's going on in the situation. Sometimes the genre tells us a lot about what our audience needs and allows us to make certain assumptions about how they want to be communicated to. I think this goes back to breaking down how There are implicit tasks within the sentence. The technical communicator's job is to transfer information to their audience with the smallest cognitive load while still being trustworthy and actionable. And I'd like to go through some of these. The first one is I think the biggest learning opportunity for our students in engineering, um especially in their early engineering days, which is
00:18:43
Speaker
this ah balancing cognitive load and content. Because as a new engineer, everything is so exciting, right? They they finally get to take their engineering classes. They get to focus on producing data and making things. And they're in the lab, so they get to touch all the things and understand how data came to be. But when you're communicating that to an external audience, we need to talk about decisiveness.
00:19:09
Speaker
Yes, exactly. And I think some of it is also rooted in the historical progression of academics and how we have looked at writing as a skill. Historically, if someone were to ask, do your students have this skill?
00:19:25
Speaker
a faculty would say they wrote this. It has everything that you would expect in this course and hence they have the skill. So writing was always a means in a way to demonstrate capability of those technical skills.
00:19:42
Speaker
Almost as if it was just an exam that you could have circled an answer. Exactly. So instead of a quiz, now you are writing a report where the question is a broader question and you are just tick marking, I know how to do A, B, and C because I used those equations and I applied it. Great.
00:19:58
Speaker
it shows your competency with the technical stuff but that has a different purpose. The purpose is to understand whether you understand or not but now if you are saying okay I designed this product if you think from a capstone design level where you're engaging with a sponsor or with with an investor you're designing a product they don't need to know if you know your engineering they assume that you know But what they would need to know is, is your product going to work? Under what circumstances would it not? What would it cost? And those kind of actionable items. Which is why I think once we import this knowledge to students that these two are different writing styles for different audiences, ah I think they could become better decision makers of how to balance this content versus their actionability.
00:20:48
Speaker
Right. of Really balancing how much information can I give my audience before it just becomes overload. Absolutely. And ah one snippet I would put in, one of the most common comments I have on report is fluff, the word fluff. And I find this very occasionally you read through an executive summary or read through an introduction or introduction of design tools or design concept selection.
00:21:18
Speaker
you see them explaining how the tool works, not the outcome. The outcome would come as a last sentence. And so and so I occasionally have to say that that's just fluff.
00:21:29
Speaker
That last sentence should be your topic sentence. Let's start there. Exactly. I think that really ties into one of the other implicit tasks, which is determining what counts as information. Because to you as a person in the lab, all of this information was valuable to get you to your endpoint. But what is information to you might be extraneous junk data to someone else.
00:21:53
Speaker
Absolutely. I think part of it is also training students to make an effective argument. I think engineering students may be assuming that those are all political science skills or skills you learn in literature, media and all of that are not necessarily in engineering because if you have data, data speaks for itself. That's not true.
00:22:18
Speaker
data is just data. You have to transfer that into actionable information. And I think that's that's the the leap that we have to help students take. So they realize that there is data, and I have to make sense of it, and I have to help audience make sense of it. Exactly. Which brings us to our next implicit task, which is determining the actionable threshold. Because again,
00:22:45
Speaker
It is the audience that determines whether or not you were able to hit that threshold. Absolutely. And I think this is where students being able to analyze who is the recipient of their information would be really helpful. And that's why I love this scenario-based learning approach because it tells them what the scenario is and how to decide who are they writing for or who are they preparing the pitch for.
00:23:11
Speaker
Right. And some of the lab classes, we have an audience in a scenario designed around the labs doing experiments to answer customer needs. And so our students need to think about the kinds of decisions that the customer wants to be able to make based on the data that's going to be produced in the lab and then be able to select that data and analyze and translate that data into actions that the audience can take.
00:23:44
Speaker
Yeah, and if you think about it, and obviously you have, but it's interesting when you say it that way because it's almost like when you are writing or preparing information, you are going two, three steps further. You are almost going into the mind of the reader and thinking what actions would they take. For example, we had this conversation about when someone shows up at the expo and maybe they are skeptical about a certain type of a technology,
00:24:14
Speaker
maybe the actionability threshold there is to not change their mind completely, but just get them to open up to consider an alternative approach that you have to propose.
Setting Communication Goals
00:24:25
Speaker
That is very different from someone who has already invested in your technology and trying to figure out if this is something to invest further in or make a slight pivot. So I think that is really important to realize that we are asking students who will be effective communicators of the future to really think two, three steps ahead of how their message would be utilized. Right. What is it that I'm trying to communicate? What do I want to happen? Can I get this audience there in the genre or time that I'm given? And if not, what needs to be my intermediary goal?
00:25:02
Speaker
Exactly and we have this microphone in front of me and that reminds me during one of my graduate level classes I had a faculty who draw a microphone and kind of headphone around and he was saying everyone is tuned into this FM station called the VFM. It's W-I-I-F-M which says what's in it for me.
00:25:25
Speaker
So everyone cares about what is this information going to do for me? And now if you are training our students to have that awareness and make sure that whatever they are saying has an actionable component for their user, immediately they will have an interest and attention from the audience. Right. Exactly. Is there any more implicit tasks that we haven't talked about yet? The trustworthiness threshold. It's a tricky one.
00:25:53
Speaker
The trustworthiness threshold in determining that as the writer really ties into the others because you have to determine what kind of ethos or trustworthiness you have already and whether or not maybe that has some baggage to it that's dragging you down or it has some credibility to it that is bringing you up like your company name. And then how much credibility do you need to add in the communication? How specific do you need to be with the data?
00:26:26
Speaker
to get your audience to believe you, to trust you, without overburdening the cognitive load. Yes, and um I think one of the parallels, if you see, in research journals you could find is one of the characteristics of a good journal paper is that all the methods are repeatable. And you will see all that if a researcher publishes a paper, they are very detailed about how they conducted the experiment. Because if others can replicate that, then it suddenly shows trustworthiness.
00:27:00
Speaker
Right, and it's like expectation of the genre for that audience because that audience has a really high threshold for trustworthiness. Exactly. So getting back to this experience of where students are maybe designing a product or sharing data from an experimental lab, it's important for them to realize that how would the audience believe and trust in them?
Building Credibility without Overload
00:27:26
Speaker
Have they done the work and have they shown where it's applicable and where it is not? It's important to show the application but it's equally important to show where the limitations are as well. oh One other example of trustworthiness could be using references, as simple as using references.
00:27:44
Speaker
You could say, well, if we teach students about the downsides of plagiarism, they get this message. But presenting that same message from this trustworthiness lens helps them really understand why it is important for me to cite reputable sources, not just cite sources, but cite sources which are reputable so that I could build my case. And ultimately, I'm building an argument is what we need students to realize and not that I am presenting data and somehow the audience will make a decision. I think that also ties into the way that we've set up the scenarios for the lab courses. And it also ties into our very last implicit task, which is understanding genre. So in the lab courses,
00:28:31
Speaker
we have a client who we're writing a report for and we're writing this report with the scenario being that we're a part of a larger technical firm called Berdell Inc. So we already have some implicit ethos with the client because we're not writing as Jill Fennell, we're writing as Berdell Inc. But that doesn't mean that you can just not include data. There's still a balance going on and you have to figure out what's appropriate for this genre.
00:29:00
Speaker
Even though our client, we call her Julie Chang, has worked with Berdell before and trusts Berdell, this is a report and you still need data in a report. You don't need all the data that you produced. In fact, that would be overburdening the cognitive load and not being very decisive. But reports need to have the amount of data to at least support the argument that you're making about what kind of actions would be able to be taken by the client in the future.
00:29:30
Speaker
It's interesting. I should confess that job the application of genre for technical communications or communications in general was something I learned after talking with you because my understanding of genre was, well, that's how you choose your favorite music. ah And so I wonder if you could help share what would genre mean for engineers who maybe have not heard of its application for engineering communications.
00:29:59
Speaker
When we're talking about genre and communication, we're generally talking about the type of deliverable. So if it's a report, that's a particular genre. If it's a presentation, that's a particular genre. But I like to think of genres as umbrellas. So we can have major umbrellas like written communication versus oral communication, two different genres that have many, many, many sub genres under them, even reports themselves.
00:30:26
Speaker
There are different kinds of reports. There are design reports and there are technical reports. In presentations, we have presentations that might even have a genre element or genre expectation to that presentation that is unique to the business. Where some businesses, their expectations for presentation is that I need to be able to listen, understand, and then go and act.
00:30:52
Speaker
where ah different businesses understanding of a presentation might be, I need to be able to look back at your slide deck later and remember anything I might have forgotten. And you can't give one presentation to the other company and have everyone be happy. So genre is really figuring out what the expectations for the mode and method that you've been asked to communicate in are. That's that's a great explanation. So thank you for that.
00:31:18
Speaker
That is interesting. We use it implicitly. We all have expectations. And I think one thing I have realized is all of us as faculty also have those expected genres, except that they are inspired by the kind of journals or funding agencies they might be writing proposals to. So inherently, for many of us, it becomes second nature to use the same genre that we might be using for a different context and expect students to be able to write to that because that's what we do occasionally. And so I like this approach of having scaffolding within throughout the curriculum and having these scenarios where it puts the faculty out of the equation a little bit and brings this real world experience inside the courses.
00:32:13
Speaker
I also agree. I like this orientation to communication because we want it to move students away from thinking that communication is just completely subjective. All I have to do is please my teacher because communication is not subjective.
00:32:33
Speaker
it's appropriate, which I can see how that might seem subjective. But appropriateness, yes, it changes based on the situation. It frustratingly depends, but it depends on things that we can map out, like audience, purpose, genre, context, things that you and I have spent time talking to students about.
Adaptive Messaging: Rigid Rules vs. Appropriateness
00:32:56
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. i'm I'm really excited to bring more of this training into the curriculum because engineers really need to know that. And again, this takes our students away from just being communication rule followers who someone else might come in and change the rules and then they're starting from scratch to communication decision makers who can look at the situation that they find themselves in and decide how to act appropriately.
00:33:25
Speaker
which I feel like we've been talking around the phrase situational learning a bit. So I know you and I taught ah together this summer and we started developing some scenarios from from scratch. So can you talk about why you see scenario-based learning as being important to the web communication program and the way that we're trying to teach engineers to communicate across their time in the Woodruff School?
00:33:54
Speaker
Absolutely. um So I'll start with the the example or the scenario we created for ME 2110. We realized that many of our students take the course and most likely they end up with an internship after the course or within a few few semesters or sorts.
00:34:11
Speaker
So we thought, why not have this course as a scenario wherein students are interns and their role is to land a full-time offer. So they are trying to build up these these assignments and go through that progression of design. But really, when they are communicating to their internship supervisor, the goal is to make sure that they are also communicating that they are ready to be to be engineers. And so one thing that we realized in that experience was Making it more realistic, it increases engagement because now students realize that, okay, I'm building a skill that is transferable, that is usable in the future, and not just for this specific course.
00:34:57
Speaker
And I think the more impact that we will see will probably be in in two years when I see them in capstone, hopefully, fingers crossed, wherein hopefully they they outshine their peers who maybe not have had that experience of learning how to communicate effectively.
00:35:14
Speaker
and learning how to make decisions to make more appropriate
Scenario-Based Learning: Preparing for the Real World
00:35:19
Speaker
communications. It helped them better understand why communicating certain aspects of what they had to do, some of the process that they had to take, would actually be inappropriate in a work-like setting. For example, the avatar that we came up with, do you want to talk about Nick Devon?
00:35:38
Speaker
Yes, absolutely. So Nick Devon was an avatar that we created, was a product manager if in the company, Vidal Inc., where the students are all interns. And he communicates through either directly or through this intern supervisor, which these interns are closely working with.
00:35:57
Speaker
And obviously this this avatar, Nick, is already a designer, has years of exp experience, doesn't care about how the design tools work. He cares about what's the outcome, what what kind of decisions do I need to take from the work that you have done.
00:36:16
Speaker
And so it really challenged students to think deeply about the impact of the decision-making tools, the design tools, and not just list the tools and use the tools and share how it works.
00:36:30
Speaker
right A project manager would already know how a specification sheet works, and it would be kind of insulting to think that you as an intern should explain that to him. Instead, he wants to know what decisions are made, and then you can refer to the specification sheet as evidence for why you made some of those decisions. Absolutely.
00:36:51
Speaker
So we just mentioned scenarios and we mentioned audience avatars as an element of the scenario. Could you explain a bit more about what an audience avatar is and how we use them in the program to teach engineers to make appropriate communication decisions?
00:37:07
Speaker
I should probably credit the answer to you because all I learned is is through you. ah but i do we wrote We wrote a paper together. We collectively wrote a paper about the importance or about the effectiveness of using audience avatars to teach engineers to communicate. And we worked through a lot of concepts like that. For example, why we call them avatars.
00:37:27
Speaker
Absolutely. So a I'll give an approach of how most designers or engineers know about starting with an analogy of personas and how personas are different from avatars. So when you're designing a product, you design for some sort of a segment of of a market, some sort of a user, you create a persona of what that user would want. And that's how you kind of design your product.
00:37:53
Speaker
oh We used the term avatar because for us it was important for the students to have some framework of who they are writing to and what are that person's annoyances and what they should avoid when they are writing or communicating. It was also important that they realized that the persona is likely not the same person as the avatar. The end user of the product is not likely going to be your client or your sponsor. Instead, it's their client, they're the user of their products. Exactly. So would you say it's accurate to say that personal could be considered as an idealistic
00:38:36
Speaker
average of the end user, whereas an avatar is someone who you could relate to, who's specific. So if you're working on a caption project sponsored by an industry, you could create an avatar of your specific sponsor to then make decisions about how to communicate effectively with that sponsor.
Understanding Audiences with Avatars
00:38:56
Speaker
Yes.
00:38:56
Speaker
And so um that's why I'm also interested to try out this new experiment this semester where we'll train students to create an audience avatar and conduct an analysis of that audience where the audience is their sponsor that they are assigned to work on for the semester.
00:39:13
Speaker
Right? Because all of this is really in service to better understanding the audience, being able to make decisions based on the audience. Because if we say that effective communication is appropriate communication, then it is only fair to judge students' communication, to assess students' communications within the realm of the situation that they find themselves in, and that audience avatar helps to deepen the understanding of that situation.
00:39:42
Speaker
I think that finally got us through our main tenant and the implicit understandings that that tenant requires. So I have a question for you as the engineer here today. How do you think these tenants reflect the needs of engineering students? From a student standpoint,
00:40:02
Speaker
you could think of the important things for them is getting an A or passing through the course and getting through, right? We talk about all that's what they care about of the most. But they also care about learning and they want to care about how can they apply what they're learning so when they are at job interviews or when they are exploring extracurricular activities, then they know kind of what skills they will bring to the table.
00:40:28
Speaker
And I think all that we are doing here, especially what you are doing with this communications program is giving them this insight of how learning about communication is helpful, how they could become more effective in whatever you they are doing. And this is not just about communicating your end result. It's even more holistic. You think of teamwork. You have to constantly communicate about your deliverables and where you are.
00:40:59
Speaker
It also requires analysis of your peers and your team members. So that's an important aspect too. When you are dealing with a teaching assistant or with a faculty, you're also making decisions about the kind of information to to share and how to get the right output from from that interaction.
00:41:19
Speaker
So I think it's from an engineer standpoint, it's it's very important for them to realize why they are learning what they're learning. And again, going back to our discussions about audiences and scenarios, that's what it gives us the realism of why they are learning these schools. Why the engineering that they're doing in labs and in studio is going to be usable for someone else and how to communicate that usability externally.
00:41:47
Speaker
Exactly. And I'm really glad that we are thinking about this applicability beyond just Capstone because it's easier to see the applicability in Capstone because they're working on a project which most likely has an end user. But in other courses,
00:42:03
Speaker
historically they have tend to be theoretical in the sense that it's a course you learn this technical skill where you will apply you will figure it out but now what we are doing is no we will tell you how you will apply all the skills from this course and that's the scenario that you will be working in We won't just tell you how you're going to apply these technical skills. We're actually going to assess you on your ability to communicate the usability of those technical skills to someone who has engineering needs. Exactly.
00:42:38
Speaker
So because you work so much with industry and getting the partnerships that we need to do Capstone, I feel like you're the perfect person to answer this question. How do you see the communication program as it's currently set up, ah aligning with expectations from industry? Absolutely. Are we creating industry ready engineers?
00:42:57
Speaker
The short answer is yes, but the long answer is we could do more. okay oh We have always been a leader in design engineering, design education, and mechanical engineering in general. But I think as the world gets complex, we talk about multicultural factors and having awareness of different societies, different cultures.
00:43:22
Speaker
Communication becomes more and more challenging. You can no longer think of a monolith that you are responding to. You're always responding to something that's unique, right? So it's important to have that awareness. But I think the bigger thing is also that to graduate as an engineer means a lot. And one of the things is to realize that the world is not perfect and to realize that when you get a problem there is scope to negotiate the problem there is a scope to negotiate the scope itself and that is what students learn first hand for the first time in the course in capstone design where they get a need from a sponsor
00:44:07
Speaker
and they say well this is all that you want but these are our skills and hence we will do an excellent job at these few things but we will trim out the other things that you asked for but we are not capable for and we will communicate that preemptively so you can plan other things or backups And I think that experience, they don't have any other courses because the faculty knows what the students are supposed to be able to do. So the design assignments, the design questions and projects and all that meet them at their cognitive level. And so how can you negotiate what you cannot do and what you will not do and what you will do?
00:44:49
Speaker
You can only do that if you really understand how to communicate with the audience. I love Capstone because it gives students these real world experiences because while I'm a big fan of scenario based learning because it helps us develop appropriateness, we can't really develop appropriateness without it.
00:45:06
Speaker
the actual lived experience that capstone gives allows for responsiveness. So I'd like to take just a second to define these two if that's all right. So we actually worked on these definitions together. We defined appropriateness as the quality of a prepared message that reflects its suitability in addressing the specific context, audience, and purpose resulting in a communication that is ideally curated and positioned for maximum effectiveness.
00:45:33
Speaker
So this is a prepared message when that is done. So like in the labs courses, we give them an avatar, we give them her needs, they can prepare the message that they think will maximally suit her needs and it's done. That's not the case in Catstone where they're meeting with the actual lived sponsors all the time. So instead, this is their opportunity to develop what is even more difficult than appropriateness, responsiveness, which we defined as the quality of being adaptable and receptive to the evolving dynamics of a communication context, enabling timely and appropriate adjustments to effectively engage in the audience and changing audiences.
00:46:18
Speaker
So responsiveness encapsulates appropriateness. It, by definition, must be appropriate. But it's even harder because you have to be able to evolve with the changing dynamic. Yeah, and if I could add a little summary to that. ah The way to differentiate is appropriateness is the quality of the message. Responsiveness, you could think of as the quality of the communicator. So you could think of, once you prepare the message,
00:46:48
Speaker
it's done. It's either appropriate for the receip recipient or not. But responsiveness is a lively thing. your You're a student at the Capstone Design Expo. There are hundreds of people coming around with different backgrounds and interacting with you. You are responsive in the moment. oh And so those are very different skills and so we need different ways to assess both. And I'm I'm glad that at least we have that opportunity in Capstone and the more we can train them and prepare early on in all the earlier courses, I think the better we would be.
00:47:23
Speaker
So I know you and I have worked with GTAs or TAs in the past to help them think about these avatars and appropriateness in order are to give feedback. Do you want to talk a little bit about that? Absolutely. So one of the things we learned when we ah were working on this paper was gathering feedback from students.
00:47:43
Speaker
And one of the top comments that came from students was they would feel the experience more immersive if they got feedback as the avatar. right So instead of them just knowing about the avatar and designing things, they would like to hear what the avatar, it's almost like could the avatar come to life and give feedback.
00:48:03
Speaker
Now since we don't have the technology today, we asked our TAs, of our helpful TAs in the spring semester to kind of give feedback to students as if they were that avatar and that really helps in both the appropriateness as well as responsiveness because students write or maybe they create a video for the expo, there is an intended avatar for the expo video, the TA could give feedback as if they are that.
00:48:30
Speaker
I'm really hoping one day we have AI tools which can behave as different avatars. We're working on it. as as they like And we do something very similar in the lab courses as well. We have two avatars for those courses. One is the client, Julie Cheng, and the other is their boss, the section leader, and we call him Aaron. So when we're working with the TAs and talking to them about giving student feedback, we ask them, if you're inhabiting the role of Aaron, would you send this to Julie?
00:48:59
Speaker
would you let this go out and represent the company and one of your teams that you oversee? Or if not, what kind of changes does a student need to make in order for it to be appropriate for that client? And that's that's a very appropriate example to use because that is what happens in real life, except that now when our students graduate, go out in industry, they won't have that shock of why the world is working the way it is working because they are exposed to it in the school itself.
Communication and Career Advancement
00:49:27
Speaker
So can you talk a little bit about how does communication influence an engineer's ability to succeed in their career? Yeah, I think these days, anyone's ability to succeed in any career is primarily dependent on their communication skills. Yeah, they need the technical skills of their relevant discipline, but without communication skills, they aren't going to go ahead. Specifically, when you and I had a conversation with our external advisory board member, Rebecca Brown, she clearly shared this experience where she has engineers
00:50:02
Speaker
talk and make a whole presentation to the entire board of the company and pull in information from all the other disciplines like ah finance and marketing and all. And it's not the other way around. It's not the NBA guy who's presenting the output and the next steps. It's the engineer who's presenting and collecting data and making the case, making an argument of why they should proceed in a certain direction.
00:50:30
Speaker
And so unless engineers are able to do that, oh it will restrict and limit them to just sitting in cubicles. And if you think of going to the extents of AI and stuff, those jobs will be no longer relevant if we just train engineers who can only solve technical challenges. We want them to be excellent at technical challenges, but also communicate those results effectively. Right. At times, the value of your technical skill relies on your ability to communicate what you learned, what you developed. Absolutely.
00:51:08
Speaker
So if we're imagining that maybe we have a high school senior listening in right now who's considering joining the Woodruff School or a freshman who knows that they want to do engineering but not sure and which school yet. If we're imagining someone trying to get a better understanding of the way this program is implemented, we talked about scaffolding, but it let's get a little bit more granular. Where are students going to learn the communication skills?
00:51:37
Speaker
and So one of the hallmarks of the Woodruff School's curriculum is the scaffolding of skills and expertise throughout the curriculum. So that's our design courses which start from ME 1670 where you learn about the CAD skills and you learn about sketching which is a very important prototyping skill. But then it also has this element of communicating design using computer-aided graphics. But then you're also sharing about why you are how your design would work. ah Moving on to, we have this software-level design class you could think of as an introduction to mechanical engineering, but it's really a creative decisions and design class where students learn about working in teams, making presentations, and talking about how they use the creative design process to design a a machine or a robot that competes with other machines.
00:52:32
Speaker
And then at the junior year, they have more exposure to more in-depth design courses like some of our lab courses as well as the other design courses where they're going more in-depth. And then finally, they come to capstone design where they get to apply all of those in in one.
00:52:51
Speaker
One of the approaches that I like that we have taken is embedding smaller aspects of the overall communication curriculum of sorts into all of these courses so students see the connection from one to another. So we are using similar vocabulary across all these courses. So it's no longer this faculty said that for that course, I can forget about it because now I'm in a different course. They're seeing the same progression of skills throughout the curriculum.
00:53:20
Speaker
Ideally, students are going to see that they're always going to have to be considering their audience when it comes to expressing technical concepts. Exactly.
Enhancing Audience Understanding with Avatars
00:53:31
Speaker
The program has been around for a while and we're working on a little bit of a refresh right now. So currently, what do you see as some of the unique features of the program?
00:53:41
Speaker
I think the number one unique feature is this aspect of using avatars for teaching how to be effective in communication skills. ah As someone who's in engineering, passionate about design, we hear about personas for product design, but using it a parallel analogy for oh designing communication is its just really impactful. It really helps students get to this mindset of the end user of the message.
00:54:14
Speaker
If we're imagining that this podcast is already released and you have a student who's going to start with you in the next semester and they're listening to this podcast, what would you hope they take away from listening today so that they can succeed in your class?
00:54:31
Speaker
I would say I wish they get rid of this notion that communication skills is an English c class that they had to take as a mandatory subject and use this as a way to leverage and grow the technical skills to have a more impact in their career. Because that's really what it does. It's almost like a multiplier of your success if you do it well. And I hope that they build this habit through the course or through the series of courses that we have where it becomes second nature to think of the end user when they are designing their communication content. All right. Well, thank you so much for joining me. My pleasure. Thank you for having me.
00:55:15
Speaker
And listeners, thank you for tuning in. Please join us for future episodes. This season will feature informational and applying to graduate school, organizing technical reports, and succeeding at Capstone Communications, where I interview previous ME winner at Capstone. So that's just to name a few, and I look forward to a great season.