Technical communication and team teaching: making collaboration work

Collaboration represents an important paradigm for both engineering educators and professionals. The emphasis on teams is evident in recent journal articles as well as in the new Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology 2000 criteria. This focus only serves to highlight the lack of collaboration in the teaching of technical communication. Typically, courses in technical communication are taught outside the confines of technical departments, and students may never consult with a technical expert regarding the communication tasks assigned. There are exceptions, however. As a way to demonstrate the possibilities for collaboration, models of successful team teaching-from complete parity between communication and engineering to mentoring by technical faculty in collaboration with communication faculty-are outlined. Engineering and communication faculty who teach on a team model agree in principle that students are more likely to recognize the importance of technical communication if the teaching of technical communication is integrated into the technical content, rather than isolated from it. The paper offers preliminary assessments of the effectiveness of collaborative courses in comparison to traditional courses. Finally, the paper suggests the applicability of collaboration to all areas of engineering education, especially with regard to improving communication skills.