Achieving excellence in technical communication classes by using IEEE Spectrum magazine & active learning techniques

Active learning, also known as cooperative learning, is a teaching strategy which can be used to help engineering students learn concepts in typical junior-level communication courses. Students are placed in randomly chosen, mixed ability teams at the start of the course. To encourage group process and team-building skills, students adopt team roles like scribe, timekeeper, leader, & participant and the instructor uses techniques like roundtables, think-pair-share, stations, jigsaws, and journaling to deliver the objectives of the course. Articles from IEEE Spectrum magazine are used to supplement the textbook and to make the content engineering specific. The benefits to the instructor are better on-task student behavior and the ability to provide regular feedback to students despite the everyday teaching challenges of large class sizes and a wide range in the students´ level of language fluency.