Grant to help improve Trine engineers’ communication skills

Trine University mechanical engineering students will soon have some extra help preparing presentations for industry.

A university project, titled "Engineering Communication Lab: Enhancing Capstone Design Presentations with Virtual Reality," recently received an $8,980 grant from the Engineering Information Foundation (EIF).

Gurudutt Chandrashekar, Ph.D., associate professor in the Wade Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, will lead the yearlong project in the university’s Mechanical Engineering Capstone Design course.

Beginning this fall, the class will implement VirtualSpeech, a virtual reality platform that will provide automated feedback as students practice technical presentations, with the goal of preparing them for industry-style design reviews.

Dr. Chandrashekar said students will use the platform to rehearse presentations before every major design milestone, including the Requirements Review, Concept Generation and Selection Review, Critical Design Review, Fall Final Review, Spring Semester Build Review and Final Design Presentation.

VirtualSpeech will provide automated feedback on students’ communication skills while faculty continue to evaluate the technical quality of each presentation.

The project is designed to strengthen students' professional engineering communication skills by helping them clearly and confidently present complex engineering ideas.

“This approach allows students to repeatedly practice and improve their communication skills without increasing faculty workload,” Dr. Chandrashekar said.

“Through repeated VR practice and automated feedback, students will improve their presentation clarity, pacing, confidence, audience engagement, delivery consistency and reduce the use of filler words.”

The Engineering Information Foundation (EiF) makes grants to support initiatives to enhance communication skills and increase women in engineering.