It is well recognized that engineering graduates require communication and teamwork skills in order to succeed in the workplace. Unfortunately, the traditional model of lecture/tutorial/lab for discrete subjects emphasizes reliance on the instructor for the delivery of facts and well-established principles rather than teaching students what engineers really do - design, revise and test solutions while analyzing and synthesizing the best available data and theories. Thus, the Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board (CEAB) and the American Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) both stipulate that every student must have real world, team-oriented, open-ended design experiences before graduation. Mount Royal College instructors believe that students should be exposed in their first year to a design class that incorporates elements of team work, communication skills and creative problem solving so that they begin to develop these skills in parallel with their technical knowledge. Engineering Communications and Design I and II (ENGR 1251 and 1253) are two such courses. The communications component includes oral, written as well as visual communication skills, with a strong emphasis on sketching, which has been shown to have a positive impact on the engineering design process and quality of the designed solution. Developed in conjunction with similar courses at the University of Calgary, the Engineering Design and Communication courses span the entire first year and are taught by a team of interdisciplinary instructors. Students spend only 1 hour per week in lecture, and 4.5 hours per week in labs where activities are mostly team-oriented. Students are assessed with equal weight on visual communication skills (technical drawing and sketching), oral and written communication skills (presentations, report writing as well as grammar and organization) and design (team project design performance, analysis and quality).
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