A "communication skills for computer scientists" course

Authors:
Lil Blume;Ron Baecker;Christopher Collins;Aran Donohue
Affiliations:
University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada;University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada;University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada;University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada
Venue:
ITiCSE '09 Proceedings of the 14th annual ACM SIGCSE conference on Innovation and technology in computer science education
Year:
2009

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Abstract

This paper describes "Communication Skills for Computer Scientists," a novel undergraduate course at the University of Toronto. We describe in detail the three major instructional streams of the course: writing, speaking, and interpersonal communications. We present a novel approach to teaching writing, interactive multimedia web technology to teach public speaking, and specific interpersonal skills training as the integral parts of the course. We contribute a detailed description of the curriculum and report measures of success, both quantitative data and reactions from students in their own words.