Engineering Communication workshop

Professional engineers are required to write a wide range of documents for operational, managerial, design, and inter-office correspondence purposes—project proposals, business cases, reports, memos, to name only a few. The ability to write clear, concise, informative, and engaging documents is therefore a core skill and often key to career advancement.

Date: October 9, 2013
Time: 9am – 5pm
Duration: 1 day
Location: 688 Sherbrooke Stree, West

------

Date: November 15, 2013
Time: 9am – 5pm
Duration: 1 day
Location: CEGEP Champlain - St. Lawrence
790 Neree-Tremblay
Quebec City, Qc
G1V 4K2
www.slc.qc.ca

Fee: $495 CAD plus applicable taxes

Course Description

This one-day workshop will cover general principles and skills in engineering communication that can be transferred to various genres of engineering documents. We will begin by identifying issues and challenges in communicating technical information, and then focus on strategies for creating clarity and cohesion, identifying audience requirements, generating proper flow, and achieving “engineering elegance” in writing. The workshop will also include an in-class analysis of an engineering report: using the general principles and strategies highlighted in the first part of the workshop, participants will work individually and then collaboratively to identify communicative strengths and weaknesses and make suggestions for improvement.

Administering department: The McGill Writing Centre and Career and Professional Development

Objectives

• Develop a clear understanding of the professional writing context for engineers
• Understand the importance of audience, purpose, organization, and style in effective written communication
• Develop the ability to analyze and revise documents for clarity, coherence, and flow

Topics Covered

• The professional writing context for engineers
• Audience expectations
• Generic conventions
• Writing to task: audience, purpose, organization, and style
• Drafting, editing, and peer-review

Who Should Attend

• Early career professional engineers
• Mid- and late-career engineers seeking to upgrade their written communication skills

Lecturer

Dr. Andrew Churchill obtained his doctorate in education from McGill University in 2011. He also has an M.B.A. from the University of New Hampshire.  He has extensive experience writing in a variety of professional contexts including: editing two books, developing strategic plans, writing white papers, and creating marketing materials.  For the past six years he has taught communication in Engineering, a required course for McGill undergraduate students focused on developing professional writing skills.