Having completed my undergrad at NJIT, the only place we experience forms of technical writing was doing lab reports for various classes, but the documentations you're referring to was only in Capstone. I do agree that there should be a required class in technical writing, that would help in the work environment. I was fortunate enough that my first job at a generic manufacturing company, I worked adjacent to a consultant we had hired, to do technical documentation. Him and I became friends, and he took me under his wing, and showed me the ropes of how to go about it. Most people who enter the field of technical writing, usually go to private classes, that teaches one specifically in writing documents for pharma, medical devices, and other various FDA regulated industries. If you are interested in such things, feel free to contact me and I can let you know when the next set of classes are, they're a little pricey, but worth it, especially if its something you are considering doing as a career. Also as you put in more time in such industry, your library of previous documents will increase, rendering basic writing very easy.

Unfortunately I haven’t experience with this type of documentation in the industry since i do not work yet for a medical device company that would allow me to see or do this type of documentation, so the only experience I have been exposed to technical writing is on my undergrad on my capstone class, and I think as a BME we do a lot of technical writing due to capstone project compare to other major so I think this is an advantage, which it will highlight us to this hiring companies.

This brings up a great point- typically, engineers have limited exposure to technical writing. Personally, as an undergraduate, I was not required to take a technical writing course but it was integrated into many courses in the curriculum. However, even with the writing integration, writing required by industry, such as SOP’s, quality documentation, DSD’s, DHF’s, etc are not things that were integrated into the curriculum, even though many engineers will encounter these at some point in their careers.
Personally, I have come across SOP’s in my previous job that was incomprehensive. It become my job to update the SOP’s in question so that they were able to be better followed going forward. From my understanding, the previous person made them difficult to follow for job security reasons. They thought that by leaving gaps of knowledge in the SOP, it would ensure that they were the only person knowledgeable enough to operate the machine, thus securing their position at the company but all it really did was frustrate and confuse others.

I did my undergraduate degree at NJIT in ME, and I thought that I got a decent amount of exposure to technical writing, especially in the form of lab reports. Although it may not be the same as design control documents in industry, you still need to use the same clear and concise writing style mentioned by neb2. It is not an easy skill to learn, especially since engineers tend to include too much detail. I have come across this in industry where a technical document that could have been very concise was written as a huge long report, with a lot of the content not being necessary for the target audience. Although I agree that it is beneficial to take classes that teach technical writing, as gp232@njit.edu mentioned, I think that the only way to master the skill is by a lot of practice and experience.

I agree with @srg36 that the way to master the skill is a lot of practice and experience. I would like to add reading to that list. I took Technical Writing as an undergraduate course, I was good but not essential. Nobody was really in my field then and the teacher tried to generalized all students so they could only provide the structure but not correcting the sentences or content in even somewhat detailed. I learned a lot through writing myriads of lab reports in other Bio-based class. Reading lots of journals/news (especially the ones about your field) has been a great help in improving my technical vocabulary greatly. In many classes, you may have to summarize journal articles and present, I think it's a great way to learn where you have only a certain amount of time to convey the info to the viewers in the most understandable way.

In my undergraduate experience, I took Capstone which was a two-semester long simulation of what industry is like. This class exposed me to technical writing in order to make clear and concise documentations. My professor would use the term "idiot-proof" for documents such as test plans to ensure that any instructions found in this document would be followed exactly as intended with replicable results. Having this class directly translated into my work in industry. When reviewing other documents, I am able to note where there is ambiguity and how it can be improved in a new revision.

Technical Writing courses are not given to students as a priority when in actuality the work industry requires an individual with good technical writing skills. When starting a full-time position as an engineer, I had to validate a new automatic fixture for production use. The specification document and preventative maintenance documents associated with the fixture were so hard to follow. It wasn’t clear as to what the purpose of the specification was. As an undergraduate student, we were taught to write requirements documents and technical documents in a way that if a random person picked it up they could understand how to the fixture worked and how to rebuild the entire device. I never took a technical writing course, but it would be very useful for students to take it. Being able to convey information in the form of a clear and concise document is crucial within the medical industry.

I agree that technical writing is an essential skill that all engineers should have. Mandating classes that help students practice this skill will be a long-term benefit. Most communication especially interdepartmental paper-work uses written documentation as a primary communication tool. Concise and objective comprehension is important when writing about procedures, regulations and other technical writing topics. The NJIT BME curriculum does not have a technical writing course however the school does offer classes. Fortunately, the senior capstone project class does help the student learn technical writing when going through their simulations on writing test plans, requirement documents, and weekly milestone updates. This will help in the transition into the industry from the undergraduate level.

I agree with this that the thought process in technical writing in industry is always "if a random person picked up this document, could they understand how it works." However, undergraduate doesn't teach much technical industry writing because I believe, most technical writing is learned on the job. Therefore, I don't believe it is necessary to have a class that teaches technical writing. Technical writing and understanding the content in written documents in industry are two different things. When writing documents, chances are there already exist the same exact or very similar document. In this instance, most work that needs to be done for it is really copy and pasting and creating minor edits for your purpose. Understanding the content of what is written in documents and other peoples writing just comes with experience over time.

Thanks for bringing up a great point. As an undergraduate, I was required to take a technical writing course but sadly enough, that course was very similar to any other Humanities course. The closest exposure to technical writing was provided by the Capstone course. But now going through the part 1 of this MDD course, I have come across many documents that I hadn't even heard the names of before.

While working, initially I was given the task of fixing up many documents related to the softwares that were already in production. I had to really learn it the hard way on the job by getting help from my team. I would definitely agree that a technical writing course related to the major should be offered to provide a more practical learning experience.

Technical writing is extremely important in industry, but unfortunately, during my time as an undergrad at NJIT, I was not exposed to any technical writing classes. Luckily within my first month working as an R&D engineer intern a Technical Writing course was offered for all new employees which gave me great exposure to good and bad technical writing along with some really helpful tips. While I did complete a lot of writing during my undergrad for lab reports, essays, papers, and so on, professors never focused on educating students on proper technical writing and the dos and don't associated with it. I also feel the technical writing is something that can be easily learned independently and while working in industry, but it would have been great for NJIT to have included a technical writing course as a requirement to graduate.

I feel that my undergraduate career prepared me to write technical reports more than protocols. I am confident in my writing abilities, however, I still feel like it is always a good idea to get an independent person to review your work.

In my short time in the industry, I’ve found that older engineers that have been in the industry for a while struggle with making their verification protocols and reports easy to read. Many times, they write it in such a way that only they can understand, or with so much upfront technical detail that the reader gets lost. When I first started working, I was very hesitant to provide feedback on older engineers writing. I didn’t think they would listen to me or would assume I was just being picky. After a while of reviewing and getting more comfortable, I was able to provide constructive feedback to older engineers to improve their writing style.