Developing and Facilitating a Workplace Communication Workshop for Engineering Student Interns: Implications for Practice

Abstract

In this paper, Engeström’s third-generation activity theory (AT; 2001) is adopted as an analytic tool to analyze a workplace communication workshop for engineering students and an experienced educator’s cognition and practices. Curricular elements of the workshop and the educator’s pedagogical approach are analyzed together with the motivation for a specific learning experience design and the rationale for adopting such practices. AT served as an invaluable analytic lens for our reflection on the workshop’s design, its activities, and the educator’s cognition and practices. This reflection provides a worked sample for AT-based reflective practice and strategies for developing workplace communication workshops. It is concluded that by using AT as an analytic tool for reflection, educators can effectively reflect upon and analyze their course design and teaching practices, thereby externalizing their knowledge, skills, and attitudes. Educators can develop their expertise through such a reflective process and create more engaging and effective courses. We also recommend that AT be adopted as an analytic tool in reflective practice modules in communication teacher education and training programs to enable prospective and novice teachers to engage in reflective practice and purposefully develop their teaching expertise throughout their careers.