Michael Collura

A comprehensive engineering college-wide program for developing technical communication skills in students

The Project to Integrate Technical Communication Habits (PITCH) is being implemented in the Tagliatela College of Engineering at the University of New Haven across seven engineering and computer science undergraduate programs. PITCH develops written, oral and visual communication skills in students starting in the very first semester and continuing through all four years of each program. Communication instruments encompass technical memoranda, poster presentations, oral presentations, laboratory reports, proposals, and senior design reports, including the use of tables and graphics in each. Advice tables, annotated sample assignments and grading rubrics are being developed for each instrument to assist students in their work and facilitate consistency in instruction and assessment across multiple instructors teaching different course sections. Within each of the seven programs, specific courses that span all four years are targeted for implementation and assessment of technical communication skills. The different communication instruments are distributed across courses as appropriate, and the skills are developed at deeper and deeper levels as students progress through the years. A critical feature of the project is that technical communication skills are integrated into the content of regular engineering courses and are taught by regular engineering faculty.

Preliminary Assessment of and Lessons Learned in PITCH: an Integrated Approach to Developing Technical Communication Skills in Engineers

The Project to Integrate Technical Communication Habits (PITCH) was recently implemented at the University of New Haven. The goal of PITCH is to develop good communication habits in engineering students. The program is designed to integrate technical communication learning objectives into a sequence of engineering courses, culminating with the senior design experience. Engineering students are introduced to the PITCH program in three courses during their freshman year and the skills they learn are reinforced in each subsequent year of their studies. After three years of progressively more extensive development and deployment, a preliminary assessment of student writing from freshman to junior years was performed. PITCH teaches students how to report on technical work with an appropriate level of detail and how to effectively present data. As part of the program students prepare laboratory reports, technical memoranda, poster presentations, oral presentations, and senior design reports. PITCH has been integrated into four freshman and sophomore courses taken by all engineering students, as well as two higher level, program specific courses. Engineering faculty teaching these courses were trained through workshops conducted over three summers. A random sample of students across four majors was selected for the assessment. The sample was taken from the first cohort of students that had taken freshman through junior courses with trained instructors. Four faculty members and an external consultant involved in the development and deployment of PITCH were chosen as evaluators. The student assignments chosen for review were evaluated by a common rubric to determine whether students achieved the PITCH learning outcomes. The evaluations were done with all five evaluators present. Student progress through the first three years of PITCH is quantified and the results demonstrate that student writing improved significantly. The pedagogical and administrative lessons learned by developing and implementing the program are also discussed. PITCH is supported by a grant from the Davis Educational Foundation.