What You Said About Your EE Writing Skills

Thanks for completing the Communications opinion survey for EE4811. This makes it possible for me to tailor the material more exactly to your stated needs and wishes.
Let's begin with writing, as that is the objective of the first few assignments, not to mention the power points and posters that you will be working on this semester and next. The photo is from Demo Day in April 2007, and reflects the culmination of the communication process, when UTSA invites the community to get involved in the projects the graduating EE's create in 4811 & 4813



Your responses indicated that most of you feel that your writing skills are average--that you can do the job, but want to have more pizazz! Remembering that 1 = outstanding and 5 = need practice, the graph reflects your self-evals, almost a perfect bell curve. What do you want to learn how to do? Read these bullets--they reflect all 35 responses; many of you had similar comments:

• Translate my ideas to paper


• Convert technical info into readable form, make it easier to understand, not so dry and boring


• Be sure to be complete and correct, avoid repetition


• Remove emotion from statements
  
• Be able to communicate to different audiences


• Bring in balance, not too long, not too short, provide only appropriate detail


• How to write with other people as a team!


• How to organize the material


• Iron out the problems with grammar


• How to avoid the usage of "I," "me," and "we"


• Catch typos, spelling


• Last, but not least, several of you referred to wanting help with citations, sources, bibliography, how to describe illustrations, figures, and tables. In addition you mentioned that the abstract, introduction and conclusions are the hardest parts of a paper to write. This is an excellent point, and goes back to the first bullets about making a paper clear and interesting.

Hopefully our last class on August 31 helped kick-start the citation and reference creation process. And--you should probably have some questions by now. If so, write, come by my office at BSE 1.504, or ask in class.

We will be dealing with many of the concerns you mentioned in our class on September 7, and throughout the semester. My objective is to move the people who rated themselves 4's and 5's up a notch to at least a 3, and the 3's up a notch or two. It is not an overnight process, but we have until December 2007. Writing is not always easy (you ought to read what authors have to say about it), but a little effort to improve on your part can have a big payback in your career and serve to potentially impress the boss, or your professor!

Have a good Labor Day!

Welcome to UTSA ECE 4811--Design One

Now for the hottest course in Electrical Engineering--where you put everything you have learned together to create THE GREAT PROJECT. Even if you haven't gotten everything you need, Professor Allo and I are here to help you find it. Although these two semesters may be tough, they pretty much replicate the ECE workplace, and you will find there are probably not that many surprises waiting for you out there . . . or so our graduates tell us.

I will be working with you on the skills which help you to more effectively communicate your thoughts both in written and oral form (working on these skills now will result in you saving much time and grief later).

We should have fun in the process of learning the tips and tricks of scientific writing (this is different from Comp One), and also look at ways to get over the fear of making a presentation to advancing to the point of really being able to deliver material succinctly and with ease.

You will find that as you no longer have to worry about some of the details of scientific composition and know you your presentation style is improving, you will find it easier to concentrate on what it is you want to communicate. Some of the other topics of interest interpersonal skills (learning what makes people tick--useful for team work), resumes, and practicing job interview questions.

The purpose of the blog is to save you time in communicating with me or with others in the class, and also having the ability to post topics of interest or field questions. It is a relatively easy way to stay in touch, and interesting as well as more of the class gets involved in posting.

So . . . stay in touch and blog away!