3 Credit Hours

Communicating effectively is central to the success of any engineering project and to advance in your engineering career. In this course you will learn principles of writing clearly and effectively for the wide range of communication activities professional engineers must do for a range of audiences. Topics covered include writing reports, writing proposals, delivering presentations, planning and revising writing, providing feedback, and more.

Prerequisites

Graduate standing or permission of instructor.

Course Learning Outcomes

• Students will be able to produce engineering reports that clearly and concisely communicate results of engineering analyses to the intended audience(s) and achieve the intended goals of the project.
• Students will be able to identify requests for proposals appropriate for their engineering work and write proposals that persuasively communicate project goals, team qualifications, and appropriate engineering techniques and analyses.
• Students will be able to identify and implement appropriate visual design techniques for displaying results of engineering analyses.
• Students will be able to lead teams through the process of producing professional engineering reports, including implementing tools and workflows appropriate to project goals.
• Students will be able to design and deliver engineering presentations for technical and non-technical audiences.
• Students will be able to analyze samples of professional engineering documents, critique their effectiveness, and revise to improve the documents.
• Students will be able to adapt complex technical information and effectively design communication to inform diverse audiences.

Course Topics

• Effective report writing
• Writing winning proposals
• Mechanics and style of engineering writing
• Designing effective slide decks
• Delivering strong presentations
• Providing effective feedback on documents

Course Requirements

Task	Percentage
Homework	20%
Concept Paper	25%
Report or Proposal Revision	30%
Slide Deck & Presentation	25%

Course Schedule

Unit	Topic	Week
Unit 0	Course Introduction	Week 1
Unit 1	Principles of Effective Writing	Weeks 2 – 5
Unit 2	Writing Engineering Reports and Proposals	Weeks 6 – 8
Unit 3	Delivering Engineering Presentations	Weeks 9 – 10

Textbook

No textbook purchase is required for this course. All readings will be available online through our Moodle site or open-source textbook.

Updated: 10/31/2025.