Communication Skills for the 21st Century

Civil engineering educators and practitioners are currently examining techniques for the improvement of civil engineering education as it moves into the 21st century. The future needs are focusing on improvement of the nontechnical abilities and skills of civil engineering graduates who, in the future, will be involved in an increasingly complex and interactive society. Along with these additional skills, future civil engineers will need to access information to keep up with an ever changing pace due to today's era of information explosion. Access to the vast interconnected knowledge base provided by the World Wide Web must now be viewed as a communication skill for future civil engineers. Communication of the kind that the Internet (through the World Wide Web sites) provides will be essential for maintaining a lifelong learning capability of students if they are to be competitive in tomorrow's work arena. Tomorrow's classroom instruction should focus in part on those computer skills that involve using the computer as a tool for information access and communication. Through this new technology, civil engineering educators must train students to be information gatherers since students will no longer be able to memorize and retain all of the expanding information they will need to be successful in their careers. Faculty must now adapt to change to prepare students to communicate effectively in oral, written, and on-line formats.