Developing Mathematical Communication Skills of Engineering Students

In Malaysia and also elsewhere in the world the demands for graduates who have employability skills such as ability to think critically, solve problems and can communicate are highly sought in the workplace. In the early 2006, the development of such skills was recognized as integral goals of undergraduate education at Universiti Teknologi Malaysia. Since then rigorous efforts have been made to inculcate these skills amongst the undergraduates. In this paper, we will share some of our experiences in coping with the challenges of changing our teaching practices to accommodate this quest though focusing on communication. For mathematics learning to occur, we believed that students should participate actively in the knowledge construction and be able to take charge of their own learning. Taking these aspects into consideration, we had developed a framework of active learning and used it to guide our instruction in engineering mathematics at UTM. Here we will discuss the strategies that we had designed and employed in engaging students with the subject matter as well as to initiate and support student's thinking and communication in the language of mathematics. Some student's responses that gave indications of their struggle, progress and growth encountered in the research implementation will also be presented.