Human resources today must be nurtured with the skills needed at the workplace in preparation for future challenges. Many engineering graduates nowadays are facing difficulties in adapting themselves to the workplace. They are highly dependent on academic qualifications and underestimate the need for skilled workers who are not only technically proficient but have high competencies of soft skills, especially communication skills. The ability of graduates to communicate effectively can have a significant impact on their career development. Therefore, technical graduates need to equip themselves with knowledge of their future workplace’s communication needs. The objective of this study is to qualitatively explore the elements of communication skills demanded at the civil engineering workplace. Five participants consisting of experts from academia and industries were involved in semi-structured interviews. Data were hand-transcribed and analysed. Four themes emerged from the data and identified as oral communication, written communication, interpersonal communication, and visual communication. Thirty-four sub-themes appeared from the analysis and have been discussed accordingly.
Abstract. Shy children tend to have verbal communication problems and low self-esteem. However, the confidence and communication skills of these children could not be developed solely through classroom instructions. Ironically, the co-curricular program provides a good medium for communication activities that can improve their confidence and communication skills. Therefore, this study examined children's communication skills and communication activities during the co-curricular program at their school. The areas of study were the children's level of shyness, the implementation and the effectiveness of communication activities in the co-curricular program. The quantitative study adopted a non-experimental descriptive research design. The respondents were 357 Grade Six students from elementary schools in Segamat, Johor which was selected from a random sampling. Results showed that most children were having a medium level of shyness and the communication activities were moderately implemented in the co-curricular program at their schools. Almost all respondents viewed communication activities in the co-curricular program as very effective to reduce shyness, enhance their self-esteem and communication skills. Hence, communication skills of shy children can be enhanced through appropriate communication activities conducted during the co-curricular program. Children should be encouraged and trained to speak in public by participating in the debate, public speaking and theatre activities during the co-curricular to reduce their shyness.
One of the most crucial factors that influence the success of a construction project is communication. However, past studies found that communication failure frequently occurs at civil engineering workplaces. Among communication failures reported were oral communications, such as giving instruction and briefing; skills, which are supposed to be mastered by engineering graduates during their study years. Thus, students need to equip themselves with proper oral communication skills before they enter the industry. As such, this study aimed to develop a valid and reliable survey instrument to measure Workplace Oral Communication Skills (WOCS) by performing a step-by-step instrument validation through exploratory factor analysis (EFA). The questionnaire consisted of nine components, with 39 items of Workplace Oral Communication Skills (WOCS). In the study, the EFA was carried out in three rotations until every item’s factor loading met the minimum requirement of 0.60. Notably, Bartlett’s test of Sphericity was significant (p <0.05), and the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin test was more than 0.60 in every rotation, which means that the sample size was adequate. Furthermore, all components showed a Cronbach Alpha >0.70, which indicates that the instrument is reliable. The final result of the EFA showed that the WOCS construct only had six components with 25 items. Therefore, this study had managed to validate the instrument. Thus, Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) can proceed in the next study using the validated instrument.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.