Teaching the communication aspects of KCIDE (knowledge capturing integrated design environment)

In an increasingly complex world, engineers must cope with an ever increasing number of software tools as well as much more elaborate collections of data from the laboratory. Additionally, they are faced with a significantly more difficult challenge, being able to effectively communicate with each other and the greater engineering and non-engineering communities. They must also be able to effectively communicate with themselves. The knowledge capturing integrated design environment (KCIDE) was created to specifically address these problems. Even though KCIDE addresses the complete engineering work environment, this paper concentrates on the communications aspects of KCIDE. Specifically, it focuses on how to teach these communication aspects to undergraduate and graduate students. KCIDE is becoming a formal part of the undergraduate and graduate level instruction at Cleveland State University (CSU). Elements of KCIDE have been identified and built into instructional modules that are being integrated into the undergraduate and graduate level curricula using ProSkills, a proven program for effectively integrating these instructional modules into engineering courses both core and elective.