Elements of effective communication: Results from a research study of engineering faculty

This paper offers a brief overview of the Mapping the Future of Engineering Communication Project, a larger research study conducted by the authors. A national survey of engineering educators yielded 137 responses, supplemented with a focus group of nine engineering educators conducted at the 2008 Frontiers in Education Conference. The study explores multiple aspects of the ways in which engineers incorporate communication tasks into their engineering courses in the wake of the adoption of EC2000 standards by the ABET/Engineering Accreditation Council. This paper focuses on a particular set of survey and focus group responses that asked respondents to define the elements of effective communication. The criteria as set out in the survey are mapped against the elements of Lloyd Bitzer's rhetorical triangle. The elements explored include (1) technical content, (2) audience accommodation, (3) writer's ethos and purpose, and (4) genre conventions and proper format.