Improving a Communication Skill Through the Learning Approach Towards the Environment of Engineering Classroom

Abstract The dominant pedagogy for engineering education, especially for numerical subject still remains “chalk and talk”. Recent years in engineering education have encouraged teachers to engage their students in various forms of communication. Therefore, this paper presents a learning approach towards the environment of the engineering classroom in improving a communication skill. The quasi experimental study was conducted involving the engineering students, which comprised one experimental group and one control group. The learning process covered a period of 8 weeks for teaching and learning in phase 1 and phase 2. In the learning process, students learn how to analyse the unstructured problem given among the small group members and develop an idea into the discussion. Through this approach, students acquire communication skills in generating the ideas. The role of learning approach used to enhance the capability of communication skills among students. This study was used to measure the influence of the communication skills towards the students’ academic achievement and to measure the percentage of the students’ acceptance of this learning approach. The results of this study show that the effects of this learning approach upon the capability of students’ communication skills and student learning approach were significant.