The Critical Role of Communication in Engineering Education

 “Without clear lines of communication, our ideas would stay within our own small

development teams instead of becoming mature products. While this is obvious to those

of us who have become experienced engineers, the real question is: Why is it lost to us

when we are engineering students?”

Akbar R Khan, Software Systems Engineer, USA,

“Good Communication Is Essential...” (2014)


What I understood from this quote is that without proper communication—such as voicing or presenting your ideas to larger companies to secure sponsors or investors—these ideas will remain just ideas instead of becoming mature products. As for "why is this lost to us when we are engineering students?", I believe it’s due to differences in the environment and teaching between experienced engineers and engineering students. As students, we often share our ideas only within our own project groups and lack the support to present them to larger companies. In contrast, experienced engineers not only have their company’s backing, but they also have the funding and resources to gather more accurate data to support their proposals.

As discussed with my partner, Bryan Peh, we have a similar interpretation where we both mentioned how students often share their ideas only within their project groups. However, what we interpreted differently is that his focus was on students priortising grades over meaningful learning and lack of motivation, whereas mine was on the support or backing needed for an idea to prosper.



Comments

  1. Ashutosh KumarSeptember 4, 2024 at 11:58 PM

    Justin's interpretation of the quote tells me that with communication skills, engineering students could potentially convert their ideas to reality, instead of limiting themselves to sharing ideas of projects during school presentations for example. With this, the students would not need to wait till they become engineers to make it big.
































































































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  2. Brad BlackstoneSeptember 6, 2024 at 8:01 PM

    Thank you, Justin, for this detailed and insightful explanation. I appreciate you sharing the differing perspectives.

    ReplyDelete

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