Charles Thurston Ms.

Hofmann English 1101 December 2, 2013 Engineering Community

The community of practice that I will be introducing is the engineering community, specifically within my Engineering 1201 class here at UNC Charlotte. Engineering 1201 is an Introduction to Engineering class that all engineering students are required to take. In this class we learn the fundamentals of engineering before we branch off into each of our specific majors such as Mechanical, Civil, Electrical, and Systems Engineering. The general basics that we learn include how to work in teams, successful study habits, time management, life management, project management, and basic engineering concepts as well as how to communicate. Proper communication is a big part of engineering and is taught throughout Intro to Engineering. Each section of Intro to Engineering is a great example of a community in many ways. Within this community we have specific forms of communication. The methods of communication and writing are outlined in a book called An Engineers Guide to Technical Communication by Sheryl A. Sorby and William M. Bulleit. This book covers every form of communication including personal communication, written communication, oral communication, and visual communication. It also gives guidelines on how to use technical writing, design documents, prepare electronic documents, and reference sources. In this class we break down into small groups within the community in order to complete projects and other tasks. The engineers in this class are part of the engineering community at UNCC as a whole and have access to many resources that are available to us. Throughout the class we communicate with each other in many ways. We are often required to communicate in order to coordinate our work and to collaborate within our groups. We communicate

within these groups in several ways. We communicate through email, text messages, and group meetings. We plan for these group meetings when we meet in class or through email or group text messages. We also share our works and get the opinions of other team members through emails with attachments of our works. We also use email and meetings during office hours to communicate with our class instructor and TA from outside of class. We communicate with our instructor and TA in order to receive feedback on our progress, receive details on assignments, ask questions, and to submit our assignments. When we complete written assignments we are required to follow the guidelines and formats set for us in An Engineers Guide to Technical Communication. This book gives us a specific format for each different type of written assignment. For example a cover letter serves the same purpose as a cover memo but is formatted completely different. When writing we also have to abide by the CMS (Chicago Manual of Style) guidelines. We mainly use the CMS to format our references and for labeling illustrations and diagrams. We are required to add a signed academic integrity statement to all written assignments. When we complete writing assignments in this class it is modeled after the way engineers write in their profession. When we write reports for our projects, they are written and formatted as if they were for an employer rather than our instructor. We even address our written assignments to the XLIX Engineering Design Firm which is the name of our engineering program made into a company. When completing projects we always have access to all of the materials we need to use. We are supplied with all of the physical materials for our projects within class or have access to them from the ENGR 1201 supply room. These materials include wood used in our beam project, all of the components needed to design and build a car for our innovation project, and circuit boards and resistors for our electrical circuit project. We are taught what to use these materials for but we are expected to know how to use simple supplies in introductory engineering projects. Any resources that we need on computers are available through the Mosaic computing system. Mosaic is a system that the engineering

program at UNCC provides to all engineering students. It is a connected computing system that gives us access to all of the programs, memory storage, and printers that the engineering department provides for us. We have access to Mosaic from computing lab rooms. We can also access it wirelessly through Mosaic Anywhere that we have access to for 2 hour secessions at a time. These 2 hour secessions can be reconnected and are only limited in order to prevent inactive users from taking up space on the Mosaic Anywhere servers. After completing group projects we are required to complete an anonymous Performance Evaluation Review on each of our team members. The reviews are done by giving each member a rating for 9 different characteristics and then write at least two comments about their performance. The 9 characteristics that are reviewed are: Job Skills, Productivity, Quality of Work, Communication, Organization, Teamwork, Responsibility, Initiative, and Leadership. The first of the two comments that we are required to write must be something that was done well and the second comment should be something that needs to be improved. These reviews help us see our flaws from team members points of view. They remain anonymous in order prevent any problems among group members because these evaluations do effect our grades on the projects. The instructor and or TA of the class will also complete a review of the observed individual performance of each student. These reviews are completed in order to help students identify errors in their performance and correct them as well as to identify what the students already have a reasonable understanding of and improve their skills.