CRS 625: Oral Communication for Engineers
CRS 625 is a required class for engineering students currently pursuing their masters or PhDs. In this class, students create three major speeches (informative, persuasive, and a TED Talk) which have been created to give them opportunities to practice skills they may need in the future. On a weekly basis, the class is assigned public speaking readings to cover basic concepts, as well as grouped readings that apply more specifically to networking, interviewing, and presentations within the engineering field. Each group then presents the information from their readings to the class in order to become more comfortable with regular presentations. Because this class took place during COVID-19, the class was fully digital, with the full class meeting on Zoom for an hour or two every week, in addition to asynchronous lectures and assignments.
Because this is a graduate class, and a workshop style class, I have been more hands-off in my teaching style than I would have been in an intro class. I present weekly lectures of the public speaking materials, but the vast majority of our synchronous class time is spent on student presentations and discussion. Growth is the most central element of this class, so I have my students complete self and peer evaluations for each project, as well as meeting in groups for speech consultations to work together to grow as speakers.
Many students came into the class just hoping to fulfill a requirement; by the end of the course, many communicated to me that it far surpassed their expectations, providing them with practical skills and presentations that they would carry with them beyond the class.
Course Projects
Informative Speech
Task: Craft an informative speech for the class to educate your peers on a topic of interest to you. While most speeches in this class will be focused on the kinds of presentations you will need to make as an engineer, for this assignment, you may choose any topic you like, as long as it is something informative.
Description: An informative speech is a situation in which you are presenting knowledge of a concept or skill to your audience. This generally involves WHAT or HOW questions, which are unbiased, rather than WHY questions, though these may be useful in directing your research. As an engineer, this kind of speech will be important for presentations of your research or teaching environments. Broadly speaking, it can be any situation in which you possess knowledge that the audience does not have, and intend to pass on to them.
Purpose: This speech will employ strategies of defining, reporting, or describing in public speaking. The goal of this assignment is not to persuade; instead, you are explaining your topic in order to provide your audience with a deeper understanding of your topic. This framework requires focused and in-depth research as well as the ability to organize and structure a coherent message around a clear thesis.
Selected Quotes from Student Reflections and Conferences
“Although the primary reason for me to take this class is it’s a required course for the PhD program in the EECS department, I still feel fortunate to take the course and would like to recommend this course to my other classmates. As a PhD student, we are expected to effectively communicate our work with both internal and external people. Taking this class can equip us with sufficient ability to meet this requirement.”
“When I selected this class half a year ago, I intended to take this class because it was required for my PhD program. But as I began to learn and practice, I find it much more beneficial than I expected. As we go over the exercises, I learned how giving an attractive speech is different from teaching a course. I learn different techniques and ethics of speech, and practice to connect to the audience, and that especially benefits when I would give a speech to non-professional audiences.”
“Initially, I take this class because it’s mandatory requirement by my program. After the first week, I changed my mind and became very interested in this class. I am not good at presentation even using my mother language. This course has a very good practice and real scenario orientation design. I learnt and practice a lot from it.”
“After multiple chances to practice, I feel confident and capable to give a presentation in a web academic conference. I was satisfied with this growth and want to appreciate Meagan’s selfless help.”