ETD 555 ©Conference for Industry and Education Collaboration American Society for Engineering Education February 4-6, 2009 Orlando, Florida 1 INTERNSHIP STUDENTS' WORKPLACE COMMUNICATION SKILLS: WORKPLACE PRACTICES AND UNIVERSITY PREPARATION Ena Bhattacharyya Shahrina Bt M Nordin Rohani Bt Salleh ena_bhattacharyya@petronas.com.my shahrina_mnordin@petronas.com.my rohanisalleh@petronas.com.my Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS, Malaysia Abstract A graduate’s ability to communicate effectively can greatly affect their career development in the future workplace. Communication lecturers need to be equipped with the knowledge of the communicative needs of their technical students’ future working environment. With such awareness and knowledge, lecturers would be able to make learning more relevant and meaningful to ease the transition of undergraduates from an academic setting to the workplace environment. Questionnaires were given to a set of final year technical students who had just returned from their 8-month industrial internship training at various organizations. The study seeks to identify essential internal and external communication activities (written and oral) practiced by the organizations at the workplace. Feedback was also obtained from the students’ with regard to the university practices and preparation required for workplace communication. The findings of this research will also provide an insight into the adequacy of university preparation for effective communication in an environment far different from the university setting. Thus, guiding these students in accordance with workplace requirements will not only bring about relevant and meaningful learning, but also result in effective participation in the said discourse community. The paper will also discuss the pedagogical implications of its findings. Keywords: communication skills, internal and external communication activities, industrial internship, technical students, discourse community. 1 Introduction The era of globalization in the 21 st century and the increasing mobility of engineering professionals around the world has placed a tremendous impact on the employers demands of prospective graduates or technical students seeking to be employed in the future workplace (Patil, 2005). Engineers of the 21 st century are not only required to possess technical knowledge but be equipped with the relevant soft skills for effective workplace communication purposes (2005: 50). In fact, Nguyen (1998) fittingly reverberates that “an ideal engineer is expected to possess a diversity of skills and attributes, balanced with technical competency and non-technical competency” (1998: 65). Employers concerns are mirrored through numerous communication studies (Artemeva, 2008; Dunbar, Brooks & Miller, 2006; Schnell 2006; Jin Xiao, 2006; Morreale, Osborn & Pearson, 2002; Grapsas & Ilic, 2001; Pinelli, Barclay & Kennedy, 1995) which resonate the need for prospective graduates to be technically competent, ie equipped with engineering (hard skill) and professional (soft skill) competency to be marketable and competitive in the industry. Engineering skills generally include technical knowledge while professional or “soft” skills include process skills, social skills or generic skills.