When does an Engineer become a good communicator?

The real question is probably not 'when', but 'how' does an engineer become a good communicator? Tied in with that is also the issue of the the personal qualities and skills that help an engineer to be a good communicator.

I usually tell students in first year that surveys of employers continue to show that what they are looking for is not so much technical knowledge, but the ability to communicate well, and other non-technical qualities. of course this doesn't mean that you will get a job as a engineer if you don't know any engineering, but it does make the point that just knowing lots of technical stuff is not enough.

Nowadays, so much of engineering is about talking to clients, working with users to understand a need, generating solutions to problems, informing decision makers of the outcomes, writing reports and so on, that communication cannot be ignored. Sure, you'll still do lots of technical stuff. However if you can't communicate that to others, your value to an organisation is limited. Put it another way - you won't find too many engineering jobs that only require you to sit in a room by yourself designing and building things.

In my field, systems engineering, the importance of communication is particularly high. Step one in creating a complex system, for example an Air Warfare Destroyer, is talking to the customer. There is a real skill in translating the needs of a customer into a clear, unambiguous set of technical requirements that engineers can use to build a system. There's plenty of engineering in there, but unless you can walk into a room and communicate, really communicate, with customers, the process will never get off the ground.

So communication is a vital engineering skill. But how do you develop those skills? Personally, there is no short cut for getting practice. Take every opportunity you can to speak publicly, make presentations and get used to standing up in front of a group of people and talking confidently. Also, don't ignore written communication. I don't want to sound like an old fogey, but SMS-style abbreviations, poor spelling, poor grammar, and so forth just aren't good enough. Your written communication may form part of the legally agreed deliverables for a contract, so it needs to be good. Therefore you might as well practice now. Make sure that your assignments are checked for spelling and grammar. Buy a dictionary and a grammar guide (the printed kinds) and learn to use them. People will never fail to be impressed by someone who can write clearly, concisely and accurately.

I also mentioned 'personal qualities'. Public speaking, for example, requires more than just practice. You need to be confident, for example. This comes with practice and preparation, but also is aided by personal confidence. You might wonder how you develop some of the personal qualities. Some people think you are born with them. I disagree, and again, it is a matter of looking for chances to develop them. Being thoroughly familiar with your subject matter is also a good start. There's nothing like knowing a topic inside out to help your confidence.

So, what can I say to summarise. If you want to be a good communicator then treat it seriously. Practise it, develop your skills and take opportunities to develop your personal qualities whenever you can. Be the first to volunteer, take leadership positions, talk to people, practice listening effectively, and know your subject.

Good luck!

Associate Professor
David Cropley
Director: Systems Engineering and Evaluation Centre

Where shall I begin?

The White Rabbit put on his spectacles. 'Where shall I begin, please, your Majesty? he asked. Begin at the beginning the King said, very gravely, and go on till you come to the end, then stop.

Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

When I need to write and academic paper (unlike the King from Alice in Wonderland), I do not begin from the beginning, but begin from the end. What do I mean by this?

It is important to know (1) what will be your end-product and (2) who will be your end-user. In other words, I ask myself what I would like to see in my paper, who will be reading it, and what format is required (a journal article, conference paper, research thesis report etc). With this approach in mind, I then follow steps of an academic writing framework based on a System Lifecycle Process.

First of all consider your paper as an end-product. Find out what are the needs: (1) your needs as an author; (2) needs of the end-user (templates, specific conference themes, author’s manuals and guidance). After this, write your paper following the phases of the suggested Paper Writing Lifecycle Process as shown in Figure 1.

Phase 1 - Paper requirements

Translate needs in to specific requirements. For example: The paper shall be written in two columns because the journal requires this format.

Phase 2 - Paper structure design

Structure your paper. It should contain an introduction, a body with paragraphs, and a conclusion. Mind mapping tools like 'visual mind' and 'free mind' can help to draw a diagram of your paper.

Phase 3 - Paper content construction

This phase is the most challenging for non-native speakers as they transfer each of their thoughts and ideas from diagrams and bullet points defined during Phase 2 into logically structured academic paragraphs.

Think about each section separately, divide each section into small subsections and small paragraphs. A "style reuse" approach is suggested here by looking at the way other authors have constructed and worded sentences and learning from their styles.

Phase 4 - Paper integration

During this phase you integrate your separately written paragraphs into cohesive paragraphs.

Phase 5 - Paper evaluation

During this phase the paper should be "read aloud, given to a friend to proofread, and checked against your requirements from Phase 1.

Phase 6 - Paper publication/submission

This is the phase where you release your paper. That is, you publish your paper (if it is for a journal) or submit your paper if it is an assignment.

Instead of having a single release of the paper, I prefer to release multiple prototypes. In System Engineering a prototype release is a type of release when the customer gets a flavour of a working product with known limitations in its functionality.

Tim Ferris, in his blog entry, discussed perfectionism as one of the showstoppers of postgraduate students' abilities to write papers. If a paper is considered as an end product, the approach to deploy a draft version of the 'working document' will be highly beneficial for students and their supervisors.

Always keep the "end" in mind when you write your academic paper. Unlike the White Rabbit, you should not listen to the King!

Dr Elena Sitnikova with special thanks to Martin Kew and Bill Daniels for their valuable comments. Elena has Russian as her native language and, like an earlier posting by Dr Yan Zhuge , has passed on her approach for writing academic papers in English as a second language.

Illustration of the White Rabbit by Hudson in Carroll, L 1935 Alice in Wonderland, New York Dial Press Inc

Don't 'I'-jack the writing

Here are some resources to supplement Judy's session on finding your critical voice.

When we say 'I'-jack, we are playing with the word 'hijack'. Unlike writing a blog or a letter, in scientific writing, we should never use the first person 'I'. For example, we would never say:

• In my opinion high cholesterol is linked to...
• I think cholesterol is caused by...
• I believe saturated fats cause high cholesterol...

Instead, we use an objective tone and the research of others to support claims. When we are objective, we are distant observers using data, research and figures.

When we are subjective, our writing is opinionated, based on personal ideas and beliefs. It might be biased and unfounded and certainly does not have a place in scientific writing.

A more objective way of presenting academic writing would be:

• A study by Smith and Brown (2006) found high cholesterol is linked to
• A study of 500 middle aged Americans living in Florida found cholesterol is caused by...(Smith and Brown, 2005)
• Saturated fats cause high cholesterol because of...

Reflective versus objective writing shows the tone of writing in various genres or types of writing (reflective writing, the precis, the essay and the report). Writing the article review shows you how you can take a critical approach when writing about the work of others.

We hope you find these useful.

Andrea and Helen

'Procrastination is the thief of time (cont)...'

Following on from Tim's popular post about procrastination and science writing, Gary Lockwood from the Maths Help Centre thought we might find this article from Stanford University interesting. Thanks for your contribution, Gary!

Finding your critical voice

Looking beyond the surface

One of the key attributes of high quality scientific writing is its accuracy and logical development of argument. We call this critical writing but this doesn't mean that it is negative. In academic circles critical writing means that you must first question the information and opinions in a text or field and then present your own evaluation or judgement.

In today's session I chose two recently published pieces of text for consideration. The first was an article from this week's Age newspaper that purported to quote a speech, delivered on the weekend by a highly respected australian professor. The second was a very recent publication written by the same professor as an editorial in a medical journal. In both cases the professor was calling on politicians to take action by introducing new legislation in several areas relating to community behaviour. Since the ramifications of changing legislation can be far-reaching, I saw this as an opportunity for the students to discuss whether the underlying arguments could be substantiated. I asked them to imagine that they were scientists advising political parties.

When presented with material of this sort, I suggest that the reader starts by listing the arguments made in each paragraph and determining whether these arguments stand alone or whether, and how, they link to one another. Sometimes it's useful to use diagrams or mind maps to show these connections. Having determined these, it's usually necessary to do some further literature research to discover whether the arguments are supported by others' work. For today's examples I had already performed some simple searches that revealed research that showed that several of the arguments in the texts were not only unsubstantiated but invalid.

A key take home message here is that you cannot rely on a person's academic credentials or position to give them credibility. As a responsible scientist, you need to read carefully and thoroughly, develop your arguments logically, and then document

Finding confidence in science writing when English is your second language

Dr Yan Zhuge is Senior Lecturer in Civil Engineering with the School of Natural and Built Environments. She has lived in Australia for fifteen years and published extensively in English - her second language.

Mandarin is my native language and I was at school for fifteen years before I learned English.

The article 'the' is not used in Mandarin, so I found myself getting confused. I still struggle with this.

I read aloud to help me become familiar with the way scientific papers are written and how they sound. For example, reading aloud has given me a sense of what is allowed in scientific writing. The first person 'I', for example, is never used.

I also found my supervisors really helpful and patient. As they corrected my language I learned very quickly. I used their writing as a model for my own writing.

It still takes longer for me to write in English than if it were my native language. This is not so much the case for emails and business writing, but for scientific articles. Sometimes it's hard to find exactly the right word - sometimes writing several alternative sentences can help.

If you just keep trying you'll get there!

Mapping and other resources

Hi science writers!

Following on from Susanna's session, here are some more resources.

• Notemaking from reading
• A reading log

Also, a reminder about this week's session on Critical Writing, which will be run by our 'scientist- in-residence', Dr Judy Ford. Please remember, this workshop has a change in room. It will be held in STC 2-08 (NOT MC1-03)

Do post any other resources you think others might find useful.

Andrea

Mind mapping

Dear Mind mappers

I hope that the Mind mapping workshop has inspired you to give this wonderful technique a try! I have uploaded two of my mind maps onto the Blog. Please scan and email me any mind maps you produce and would like to share with the Scientists Write community.


Look forward to hearing from you
Susanna.

RefWorks Training

Following on from Wynton's session, here is some information about upcoming training at Mawson Lakes:

RefWorks demonstrations

RefWorks demonstrations are being conducted by RefWorks staff on Wednesday 6th September at the Mawson Lakes Campus.

RefWorks is a web-based bibliographic manager that allows you to create your own personal database of references, to insert these references into Word documents in different referencing styles, and to automatically format in-text references and your reference list. For more information and to register for a session, visit our RefWorks webpage.

'Perfection gets in the way of excellence' - Getting started and avoiding writers' block

I find it is very easy to let busy things stop me from doing important writing, or writing which is difficult.

Academic writing requires considerable concentration to do well because it must be structured clearly and coherently. I cannot write when I am distracted by other things. When I write I use it as a process of 'thinking out loud'. I express my ideas in writing as part of my process for making them clear, because to write I must make my ideas precise.

When I write I always look at my text as 'working documents', which means that they are subject to change, either because I decide to change them, or because someone else advises me to change them. This gives me freedom to write, because I do not think that what I write on the first try must be 'perfect'. Instead I can write my ideas and later edit them to become better.

A common reason why postgraduate students do not write papers or their thesis is that they are afraid to write something which is not 'perfect', so they compromise by writing nothing. It is much better to take the 'working document' approach and get something on paper, which can then be improved.

I hope these suggestions help and I look forward to hearing what others think.

Dr Tim Ferris
Senior Lecturer
School of Electrical and Information Engineering

Welcome from Brenton - Dean Teaching and Learning

Hello bloggers and welcome to the Scientists Write! blog at the University of South Australia.

I am Brenton Dansie, Dean of Teaching and Learning for the Division of Information Technology, Engineering and the Environment here at UniSA.


I am delighted to contribute to this blog. I hope that you will take the opportunity to become involved.

Writing is a very important component of scientific work. It plays a critical role in research and the modern workplace. Scientists and Engineers need to be able to communicate their work with each other. Within the workplace you will often work in large project teams on the development of new and innovative products and services. The ability to be able to document user requirements, critical aspects of the design process, testing and evaluation processes and outcomes and budget matters are critical elements of a successful project.There are two key pieces of advice that I would give to you.

It is critical that you understand the audience/person you are writing for. What is important to the people who will read your work? What sort of style will appeal to them? What is the important thing that they are most interested in?

The second piece of advice is that in most situations you will be required to present an argument of some kind. This is quite different to writing up a prac or a maths assignment. It is very important that you find ways to be able to successfuly present an argument when you write. This means thinking about how you structure the logic of your argument and, particularly, how you incorporate evidence to support your argument.

Evidence takes many forms including the use of data and graphs. In most cases the success of your writing will be judged on how well you are able to present an argument which causes the reader to make a judgement on some aspect of your work in your favour.

I hope that you find that this blog helps you to develop this important skill.

Finding information

Thank you to the students who came todays session on finding and using information. A number of you were interested in attending other library training sessions. Training sessions will be offered for students over the coming weeks.

These are some of the main areas from today's session:

• Try using advanced Google
• Make sure you evaluate your results
• Check out Web of Science and Scopus
• Look at the Managing References web page

What was the most interesting part of todays? Do you have any search tips to share?

Regards from your Academic Library Team Carole, Bronte and Wynton

Welcome to Scientists Write!

Pictured: Helen and Andrea


We are pleased to present a series of workshops for aspiring science writers. Over the coming five weeks, the Learning Advisers at Mawson Lakes, Library staff, Lecturers and students will share their experiences of what it is like to write in the sciences.

This blog will accompany a series of five Friday workshops - the first of which was Finding and Using Information in the Sciences (see Wynton's posting below). These workshops will be held between 12.00pm and 1.00pm on Fridays from August 25. Mostly they will be held in the MC building, but sometimes these will change.

'Science' and 'writing' are not always percieved to have a natural co-existence. That is those studying science often gravitated towards numbers - rather than words.

Let's challenge this assumption! Why IS writing important to sciences and scientists? Are 'writing' and 'science' natural born enemies or is this a nasty stereotype?

What do you think?

Welcome to our community.