The Importance Of Technical Communication For Engineering Students

Albert Einstein, one of the most famous physicists, once said, “Make everything as simple as possible, but no simpler”. This quote explains the necessity of making things clearer and simpler in our everyday lives. But more importantly, the message behind this quote can be used to define the need of technical communication for engineering students. Technical communication is the use of language to deliver technical information to several audiences in a manner that is adapted to their needs and level of understanding. Throughout their educational journey and engineering career, engineering students will be writing a generous amount of program proposals, letters and technical reports. The Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology, (ABET),

Engineers and engineering companies stress that unless a student has the ability to effectively write and communicate, their technological and engineering skills are worthless. Due to this, students should have the capability to communicate in a simple and concise manner in order to deliver their ideas. For example, a group is given an engineering task to build a Lego robot. The leader of the group has to consider many aspects: dividing the tasks, items required, the structural design and programming. This could include how to program the robot, how to build it and what functions the robot can perform. Then the robot can be tested several times to see if it achieves the goals of the group. At the end, the leader would produce a report stating all the steps the group took and explain the results. In writing this report, technical communication plays a big role, because the report could be both lengthy and full of technical language or it could be simple and brief but still covering the main

Examples include project managers, clients, and the public who usually read and analyze the reports, proposals or other writings of the engineers. Therefore it is crucial for the students to realize that there are other people besides engineers who will read the reports. To accomplish that, a student must avoid the use of highly technical terms, also known as jargon. The students should also define any terms they think their audience would not know beforehand. For instance, the figure on the right shows a report on how weapon testing lead to exposure of radioactive materials. The words used throughout the report are intended for an audience like the public or the company’s clients, who do not want to see every specific detail of the weapon testing experiments but would want to get educated about the harmful effects. Therefore, for an engineering student, it is necessary to keep the reports clear and simple in order for the message to be delivered correctly to the targeted