Great work. Communication is essential for being part of the scientific community. As a "soft skill" it's been increasingly incorporated into curriculum. At MIT I taught out of the Writing Rhetoric and Professional Communication (WRAP) for twenty years. Students have to fulfill a communication requirement that included taking specific courses in their disciplines that were "communication intensive." In these courses, my collueagues and I would team teach with the technical faculty, introducing the students to the genres and having them produce their work in disciplinary documents, whether journal articles, NIH style grants, poster sessions, presentations to audiences ranging from an academic session to ventur capital, to gov't agenices. In similar forms, these activities and requirments have been growing across science disciplines.
MIT's communication requirement and model of embedding communication teaching into technical courses has existed for decades and has been replicated on other campuses. In different forms, many universities have followed. On one level, it's an extension of the older writing across the curriculum movement, which was a response to writing assignments having increasingly diminishing in curriculum and undergraduates graduating without the communication, writing, and analytical skills that they used to have and that is needed in their work. Simillarly, the communication requirement and the explicit teaching of disciplinary level science and technical communication began at MIT not out of a look at the curriculum itself from an educational perspective, but from alumni surveys that over and over showed that having learned these communication skills was at the top of what they would want/need if doing undergrad again; similarly, the alumni continually said that these skills are lacking in the people that they are hiring and working with. At MIT, the WRAP program, as well as teaching communication, also research it. The literature on teaching commnication in the sciences and engineering is pretty robust. Yet, the need, as you've seen, is still far far greater than what is offered, and, as in your post about lifelong learniing, foundational, adaptive skills in analyzing communications is such an important part of education because communication and techologies keep changing. When I started, powerpoint was new and scientific posters didn't exist. But, we hope that we've trained our students so that they can respond to new situations by looking at the goals, rhetorical issues, and audience... If you can provide a way to contact, very happy to discuss out of the Comment field. Your work is so great for the community!
Great work. Communication is essential for being part of the scientific community. As a "soft skill" it's been increasingly incorporated into curriculum. At MIT I taught out of the Writing Rhetoric and Professional Communication (WRAP) for twenty years. Students have to fulfill a communication requirement that included taking specific courses in their disciplines that were "communication intensive." In these courses, my collueagues and I would team teach with the technical faculty, introducing the students to the genres and having them produce their work in disciplinary documents, whether journal articles, NIH style grants, poster sessions, presentations to audiences ranging from an academic session to ventur capital, to gov't agenices. In similar forms, these activities and requirments have been growing across science disciplines.
@booksat13 (Hermie) Thank you for the comment and for sharing your experience! I'd love to connect and learn more about the course you taught!
MIT's communication requirement and model of embedding communication teaching into technical courses has existed for decades and has been replicated on other campuses. In different forms, many universities have followed. On one level, it's an extension of the older writing across the curriculum movement, which was a response to writing assignments having increasingly diminishing in curriculum and undergraduates graduating without the communication, writing, and analytical skills that they used to have and that is needed in their work. Simillarly, the communication requirement and the explicit teaching of disciplinary level science and technical communication began at MIT not out of a look at the curriculum itself from an educational perspective, but from alumni surveys that over and over showed that having learned these communication skills was at the top of what they would want/need if doing undergrad again; similarly, the alumni continually said that these skills are lacking in the people that they are hiring and working with. At MIT, the WRAP program, as well as teaching communication, also research it. The literature on teaching commnication in the sciences and engineering is pretty robust. Yet, the need, as you've seen, is still far far greater than what is offered, and, as in your post about lifelong learniing, foundational, adaptive skills in analyzing communications is such an important part of education because communication and techologies keep changing. When I started, powerpoint was new and scientific posters didn't exist. But, we hope that we've trained our students so that they can respond to new situations by looking at the goals, rhetorical issues, and audience... If you can provide a way to contact, very happy to discuss out of the Comment field. Your work is so great for the community!