Procedure

Step 1: (~5 minutes)

Distribute a copy of the inspection report or design brief. Explain that students will use the report/brief as their source material to produce drafts of three different documents for three different audiences and purposes.

Step 2: (~10-15 minutes)

As a large group, identify the purpose of each of the three events and the audience (reader/listener) and what structures and content would be most appropriate for each of the documents.

Facilitator Notes:

An executive summary (PDF, 156 KB) will be read by someone who may only have a general idea of the project, but who needs enough information to make a go/no go type of decision. The reader may or may not have an engineering background but will be familiar with the language of engineering projects. There is an expectation of all necessary information in a concise form.

Status Report or Status Update (PDF, 150 KB): This may be oral or written. Generally given to a supervisor or project manager, lab supervisor in the workplace who will most likely be familiar with the project, technically knowledgeable and primarily interested in what has been accomplished, will be accomplished and if there are any problems or risks to successful completion or next steps. There is probably a greater degree of familiarity personally and so less formal in nature, but not less professional.

A specification document (PDF, 151 KB) will be for specific readers to provide the requirements that a design must meet. The document acts as a requirements checklist. Because clarity and precision are essential, technical language is usually preferred over everyday language. There is no room for ambiguity in specification documentation.

Step 3: Two Approaches (~30-40 minutes)

Divide group into pairs. Each pair will produce one rough draft of one of the different documents (status report, executive summary, specifications document). Randomly assign one of the three different documents to different pairs of students. This way they could see the differences in practice. They spend 15-20 minutes to draft their assigned document.

When the students finish their draft, each pair joins two other pairs who worked on a different document, and they create a group of three pairs. Then they work all together for about 15-20 minutes to see the differences of language, format, structure, etc. that each document has.

Step 4: (~30 minutes)

Student pairs present their analysis of the purpose, the audience and the decisions that analysis prompted (e.g. what information to include/exclude, organization, language choices) and display/share their documents.