Negotiating Cultural Encounters
Narrating Intercultural Engineering and Technical Communication
Part 1 of the IEEE PCS Professional Engineering Communication series
Discusses the challenges of intercultural communication in engineering, technical, and related professional fields
Given today's globalized technical and engineering environment, intercultural communication is an essential topic for engineers, other technical professionals, and technical communicators to learn. Engineering programs, in particular, need to think about how to address the ABET requirement for students to develop global competence and communication skills. This book will help readers learn what intercultural communication is like in the workplace-which is an important first step in gaining intercultural competence.
Through narratives based on the real experiences of working professionals, “Negotiating Cultural Encounters: Narrating Intercultural Engineering and Technical Communication” covers a range of design, development, research, and documentation projects-offering an authentic picture of today's international workplace. Narrative contributors present firsthand experience and perspectives on the complexities and challenges of working with multicultural team members, international vendors, and diverse customers; additional suggested readings and discussion questions provide students with information on relevant cultural factors and invite them to think deeply and critically about the narratives.
This collection of narratives:
• Responds to the need for updated firsthand information in intercultural communication and will help us prepare workplace professionals
• Covers various topics such as designing e-commerce websites, localizing technical documentation, and translating workplace safety materials
• Provides hands-on studies of intercultural professional communication in the workplace
• Is targeted toward institutions that train engineers for technical communication tasks in diverse sociocultural environments
• Presents contributions from a diverse group of professionals
• Recommends additional material for further pursuit
A book unlike any other in its field, “Negotiating Cultural Encounters” is ideal for all engineering and technical communication professionals seeking to better communicate their ideas and thoughts in the multicultural workplaces of the world.
Information Overload
An International Challenge for Professional Engineers and Technical Communicators
Part 2 of the IEEE PCS Professional Engineering Communication series
This book covers the ever-increasing problem of information overload from both the professional and academic perspectives. Focusing on the needs of practicing engineers and professional communicators, it addresses the causes and costs of information overload, along with strategies and techniques for reducing and minimizing its negative effects. The theoretical framework of information overload and ideas for future research are also presented. The book brings together an international group of authors, providing a truly global point of view on this important, rarely covered topic.
International Virtual Teams
Engineering Global Success
Part of the IEEE PCS Professional Engineering Communication series
Dr. Brewer presents a complete guide to international virtual team communication with the most up-to-date research developments in the engineering workplace on a global scale, and a problem-solving approach to using and communicating in virtual teams.
• Presents guidelines heavily based on empirical data
• Application of virtual team communication guidelines to the field of engineering
• Provides strategies and sample projects for teaching
Teaching and Training for Global Engineering
Perspectives on Culture and Professional Communication Practices
Part of the IEEE PCS Professional Engineering Communication series
Provides a foundation for understanding a range of linguistic, cultural, and technological factors to effectively practice international communication in a variety of professional communication arenas.
• An in-depth analysis of how cultural factors influence translation, document design, and visual communication
• A review of approaches for addressing the issue of international communication in a range of classes and training sessions
• A summary of strategies for engaging in effective e-learning in international contexts
• A synopsis of how to incorporate emerging media into international teaching and training practices
Communicating in Risk, Crisis, and High Stress Situations: Evidence-Based Strategies and Practice
Part of the IEEE PCS Professional Engineering Communication series
COMMUNICATING IN R!SK, CRISIS, AND HIGH STRESS SITUATIONS
LEARN THE UNIFYING PRINCIPLES BEHIND RISK, CRISIS, AND HIGH STRESS COMMUNICATION WITH THIS STATE-OF-THE-ART REFERENCE WRITTEN BY A MAJOR LEADER IN THE FIELD
Communicating in Risk, Crisis, and High Stress Situations: Evidence-Based Strategies and Practice is about communicating with people in the most challenging circumstances: high stress situations characterized by high risks and high stakes. The ability to communicate effectively in a high stress situation is an essential communication competency for managers, engineers, scientists, and professionals in every field who can be thrust into demanding situations complicated by stress. Whether you are confronting an external crisis, an internal emergency, or leading organizational change, this book was written for you.
Communicating in Risk, Crisis, and High Stress Situations brings together in one resource proven scientific research with practical, hands-on guidance from a world leader in the field. The book covers such critical topics as trust, stakeholder engagement, misinformation, messaging, and audience perceptions in the context of stress. This book is uniquely readable, thorough, and useful, thanks to features that include:
• Evidence-based theories and concepts that underlie and guide practice
• Tools and guidelines for practical and effective planning and application
• Experience-based advice for facing challenges posed by mainstream and social media
• Provocative case studies that bring home the key principles and strategies
• Illuminating case diaries that use the author's breadth and depth of experience to create extraordinary learning opportunities
The book is a necessity for managers, engineers, scientists, and others who must communicate difficult technical concepts to a concerned public. It also belongs on the bookshelves of leaders and communicators in public and private sector organizations looking for a one-stop reference and evidence-based practical guide for communicating effectively in emotionally charged situations. Written by a highly successful academic, consultant, and trainer, the book is also designed as a resource for training and education.
The Fully Integrated Engineer
Combining Technical Ability and Leadership Prowess
Part of the IEEE PCS Professional Engineering Communication series
College teaches you to be a good engineer. But it's likely that your college engineering courses didn't have time to teach you how to effectively contribute your ideas or how to transition to management or leadership. This book provides you with those missing tools.
• Identify patterns of behavior that don't serve you (or your organization) well and change them
• Create a plan of action that will allow for personal change that will impact your professional work
• Hone the ways that your technical work can be seen positively inside your organization
• Promote the talents and skills of the team players around you
• Become a flexible, supportive, and positive asset
Engineering Justice
Transforming Engineering Education and Practice
Part of the IEEE PCS Professional Engineering Communication series
Shows how the engineering curriculum can be a site for rendering social justice visible in engineering, for exploring complex socio-technical interplays inherent in engineering practice, and for enhancing teaching and learning
Using social justice as a catalyst for curricular transformation, Engineering Justice presents an examination of how politics, culture, and other social issues are inherent in the practice of engineering. It aims to align engineering curricula with socially just outcomes, increase enrollment among underrepresented groups, and lessen lingering gender, class, and ethnicity gaps by showing how the power of engineering knowledge can be explicitly harnessed to serve the underserved and address social inequalities. This book is meant to transform the way educators think about engineering curricula through creating or transforming existing courses to attract, retain, and motivate engineering students to become professionals who enact engineering for social justice.
Engineering Justice offers thought-provoking chapters on: why social justice is inherent yet often invisible in engineering education and practice; engineering design for social justice; social justice in the engineering sciences; social justice in humanities and social science courses for engineers; and transforming engineering education and practice. In addition, this book:
• Provides a transformative framework for engineering educators in service learning, professional communication, humanitarian engineering, community service, social entrepreneurship, and social responsibility
• Includes strategies that engineers on the job can use to advocate for social justice issues and explain their importance to employers, clients, and supervisors
• Discusses diversity in engineering educational contexts and how it affects the way students learn and develop
Engineering Justice is an important book for today's professors, administrators, and curriculum specialists who seek to produce the best engineers of today and tomorrow.
Culture and Crisis Communication
Transboundary Cases from Nonwestern Perspectives
Part of the IEEE PCS Professional Engineering Communication series
A collection of case studies from nonwestern countries that offers an analysis of the significant role culture plays in crisis communication.
“Culture and Crisis Communication” presents an examination of how politics, culture, religion, and other social issues affect crisis communication and management in nonwestern countries. From intense human tragedy to the follies of the rich, the chapters examine how companies, organizations, news outlets, health organizations, technical experts, politicians, and local communities communicate in crisis situations. Taking a wider view than a single country's perspective, the text contains a cross-cultural and cross-country approach. In addition, the case studies offer valuable lessons that organizations that wish to operate or are operating in those cultures can adopt in preparing and managing crises.
The book highlights recent crisis events such as Syria's civil war, missing Malaysia Flight MH370, and Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster. Each of the case studies examines how culture impacts communication and responses to crises.
Authoritative, insightful, and instructive, this important resource:
• Analyzes how nonwestern cultures respond to crises
• Covers the role of culture in crisis communication in recent news events
• Includes contributions from 18 international authors who provide insight on nonwestern culture and crisis communication
Written for communication professionals, academics, and students, “Culture and Crisis Communication” presents an insightful introduction to the topic of culture and crisis communication and then delves into illustrative case studies that explore intra-cultural and trans-boundary crisis communication.
Engineer Your Own Success
7 Key Elements to Creating an Extraordinary Engineering Career
Part of the IEEE PCS Professional Engineering Communication series
Focusing on basic skills and tips for career enhancement, “Engineer Your Own Success” is a guide to improving efficiency and performance in any engineering field. It imparts valuable organization tips, communication advice, networking tactics, and practical assistance for preparing for the PE exam-every necessary skill for success. Authored by a highly renowned career coach, this book is a battle plan for climbing the rungs of any engineering ladder.
Slide Rules
Design, Build, and Archive Presentations in the Engineering and Technical Fields
Part of the IEEE PCS Professional Engineering Communication series
A complete road map to creating successful technical presentations.
Planning a technical presentation can be tricky. Does the audience know your subject area? Will you need to translate concepts into terms they understand? What sort of visuals should you use? Will this set of bullets truly convey the information? What will your slides communicate to future users? Questions like these and countless others can overwhelm even the most savvy technical professionals.
This full-color, highly visual work addresses the unique needs of technical communicators looking to break free of the bulleted slide paradigm. For those seeking to improve their presentations, the authors provide guidance on how to plan, organize, develop, and archive technical presentations. Drawing upon the latest research in cognitive science as well as years of experience teaching seasoned technical professionals, the authors cover a myriad of issues involved in the design of presentations, clearly explaining how to create slide decks that communicate critical technical information. Key features include:
• Innovative methods for archiving and documenting work through slides in the technical workplace
• Guidance on how to tailor presentations to diverse audiences, technical and nontechnical alike
• A plethora of color slides and visual examples illustrating various strategies and best practices
• Links to additional resources as well as slide examples to inspire on-the-job changes in presentation practices
“Slide Rules” is a first-rate guide for practicing engineers, scientists, and technical specialists as well as anyone wishing to develop useful, engaging, and informative technical presentations in order to become an expert communicator.
A Scientific Approach to Writing for Engineers and Scientists
Part of the IEEE PCS Professional Engineering Communication series
A SCIENTIFIC APPROACH TO WRITING
Technical ideas may be solid or even groundbreaking, but if these ideas cannot be clearly communicated, reviewers of technical documents-e.g., proposals for research funding, articles submitted to scientific journals, and business plans to commercialize technology-are likely to reject the argument for advancing these ideas.
The problem is that many engineers and scientists, entirely comfortable with the logic and principles of mathematics and science, treat writing as if it possesses none of these attributes. The absence of a systematic framework for writing often results in sentences that are difficult to follow or arguments that leave reviewers scratching their heads.
This book fixes that problem by presenting a "scientific" approach to writing that mirrors the sensibilities of scientists and engineers, an approach based on an easily-discernable set of principles. Rather than merely stating rules for English grammar and composition, this book explains the reasons behind these rules and shows that good reasons can guide every writing decision.
This resource is also well suited for the growing number of scientists and engineers in the U.S. and elsewhere who speak English as a second language, as well as for anyone else who just wants to be understood.
Communication Practices in Engineering, Manufacturing, and Research for Food and Water Safety
Part of the IEEE PCS Professional Engineering Communication series
This book demonstrates some of the ways in which communication and developing technologies can improve global food and water safety by providing a historical background on outbreaks and public resistance, as well as generating interest in youth and potential professionals in the field.
• History of muckraking in the food industry
• Case study on groundwater regulation
• Interviews with members of the beef industry and livestock market owners
Engineered to Speak
Helping You Create and Deliver Engaging Technical Presentations
Part of the IEEE PCS Professional Engineering Communication series
Technical expertise alone is not enough to ensure professional success. Twenty-first century engineers and technical professionals must master making the complex simple and the simple interesting. This book helps engineers do what they love most: take a complicated system and create a stronger solution. You will learn tips and strategies that help you answer one essential question, "How can I get better at sharing my ideas with a variety of audiences?"
In “Engineered to Speak”, Alexa Chilcutt and Adam Brooks combine their expertise in messaging and public speaking with research that illustrates how effective communication contributes to career advancement. Each chapter contains inspiring stories from practicing engineers around the world as well as useful examples, exercises and repeatable processes for creating compelling messages.
This book helps technical talent become better speakers, better communicators, and ultimately better leaders. This helpful guide demystifies the art of oral communication by breaking it down into ten easy-to-follow-processes that can improve the ability of professionals at any level. By the end of “Engineered to Speak”, you'll understand how to gain buy-in, identify and expand your Sphere of Influence, amplify your message, deliver compelling presentations, and learn from those who've embrace these skills and enjoyed professional success.
The IEEE Guide to Writing in the Engineering and Technical Fields
Part of the IEEE PCS Professional Engineering Communication series
Helps both engineers and students improve their writing skills by learning to analyze target audience, tone, and purpose in order to effectively write technical documents
This book introduces students and practicing engineers to all the components of writing in the workplace. It teaches readers how considerations of audience and purpose govern the structure of their documents within particular work settings. The IEEE Guide to Writing in the Engineering and Technical Fields is broken up into two sections: "Writing in Engineering Organizations" and "What Can You Do With Writing?" The first section helps readers approach their writing in a logical and persuasive way as well as analyze their purpose for writing. The second section demonstrates how to distinguish rhetorical situations and the generic forms to inform, train, persuade, and collaborate.
The emergence of the global workplace has brought with it an increasingly important role for effective technical communication. Engineers more often need to work in cross-functional teams with people in different disciplines, in different countries, and in different parts of the world. Engineers must know how to communicate in a rapidly evolving global environment, as both practitioners of global English and developers of technical documents. Effective communication is critical in these settings.
The IEEE Guide to Writing in the Engineering and Technical Fields
• Addresses the increasing demand for technical writing courses geared toward engineers
• Allows readers to perfect their writing skills in order to present knowledge and ideas to clients, government, and general public
• Covers topics most important to the working engineer, and includes sample documents
• Includes a companion website that offers engineering documents based on real projects
The IEEE Guide to Engineering Communication is a handbook developed specifically for engineers and engineering students. Using an argumentation framework, the handbook presents information about forms of engineering communication in a clear and accessible format. This book introduces both forms that are characteristic of the engineering workplace and principles of logic and rhetoric that underlie these forms. As a result, students and practicing engineers can improve their writing in any situation they encounter, because they can use these principles to analyze audience, purpose, tone, and form.
So, You Have to Write a Literature Review
A Guided Workbook for Engineers
Part of the IEEE PCS Professional Engineering Communication series
Is a literature review looming in your future? Are you procrastinating on writing a literature review at this very moment? If so, this is the book for you. Writing often causes trepidation and procrastination for engineering students-issues that compound while writing a literature review, a type of academic writing most engineers are never formally taught. Consider this workbook as a "couch-to-5k" program for engineering writers rather than runners: if you complete the activities in this book from beginning to end, you will have a literature review draft ready for revision and content editing by your research advisor.
“So, You Have to Write a Literature Review” presents a dynamic and practical method in which engineering students-typically late-career undergraduates or graduate students-can learn to write literature reviews, and translate genre-based writing instruction into easy-to-follow, bite-sized activities and content. Written in a refreshingly conversational style while acknowledging that writing is quite difficult, Catherine Berdanier and Joshua Lenart leverage their unique disciplinary backgrounds with decades of experience teaching academic engineering writing in this user-friendly workbook.