DEVELOPMENT AND INTEGRATION OF TECHNICAL WRITING SKILLS ORIENTED TOWARD ENGINEERS’ NEEDS

Abstract

Written communication is among the skills future engineers must develop and master in order to excel in their profession. Employers and the Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board also require this skill. Students in all Polytechnique Montréal programs have one course credit in their program devoted to written and oral communication. The training is provided by Polytechnique’s Centre d’études complémentaires (centre for complementary studies) for all programs. Despite the implementation of this process, we noted that civil engineering students had difficulty employing good technical writing practices in their work, such as capstone projects, lab reports and hands-on assignments. The students saw written communication workshops as satellite training and employed their learning only to a small degree in their other courses. The students were essentially stagnating instead of making progress throughout the bachelor’s degree. In response to these issues, a common approach was put into place for the entire civil engineering program as a complement to the trainings provided by the Centre d’études complémentaires. This approach has been a success; student response has been positive and improvement has been observed in the courses where writing is required. The students especially appreciate this when they perform their mandatory internship, because they feel this training makes a difference and helps them distinguish themselves.