[...]... a whole and move the group on at a steady pace Routinely restate the topic and remind participants of the issue under discussion People will readily stray into other topics, some important and some irrelevant The chair—or even interested participants—should bring a straying discussion back to the agenda If participants want to move into new productive territory, reserve time for the topic at the next... others are still present and attentive On-line meetings are more effective when participants have received guidelines in advance of the meeting and have agreed to adhere to them Ask participants to set up a split screen so that the agenda for the meeting stays visible in the left screen and other information is on the right Tell participants to ‘‘speak’’ to others when they first enter the virtual meeting... share and collaborate on documents Effective on-line meetings require adherence to a set of practices so that the meeting can be productive and fair to all participants Many of the guidelines for effective virtual meetings are identical to those for face -to- face sessions: The agenda and all relevant documents should be distributed in advance, and the moderator of the online meeting needs to keep the. .. Managers will need to know what data their departments are to provide Writers will need to have their tasks defined They’ll need deadlines The team will need to determine a review process Knowing how to manage a complicated process may be the key to producing a complete document on time Writing for science and engineering is always collaborative Whether you are a principal investigator coordinating research... Writing and the Work of Science and Engineering o Consider this situation A research group carries on an informal discussion with colleagues and management Through the discussion, the group develops an initial concept for a new coal atomization process This concept is presented in an in-house proposal to local management and then as a detailed proposal to a government sponsor The project is funded, and the. .. course Generally, the chair refers to the agenda throughout the meeting, spends a given amount of time on each item, and brings the discussion to a close Maintain Momentum and Focus Meetings should start and end on time, progressing so that the agenda is covered adequately Expect to take 5 to 10 minutes to get the meeting Collaborative Writing 19 Figure 2.1 Sample meeting agenda Note the combination... way of learning sometimes leads the novice to underrate the importance of writing in the professional world Workplace writing, on the other hand, Writing and Work 5 Figure 1.1 Three kinds of review cycles: (a) student to instructor, (b) employee to management, (c) writer to editor by way of expert referees Student writing generally has no audience beyond the instructor; after supervisory review, workplace... personal notes, presentation slides, or other material in a single, unifying electronic document, and they share that document with an entire work group via the Web Michael Dertouzos, the late Director of the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science, was confident that we will soon have an intelligent advanced authoring tool for meetings (ATM) Using the ATM, the person assigned the task of note taking builds a structured... stringing words together into sentences and sentences into paragraphs Beginning to write without a concrete sense of the shape of the entire document can lead to false starts, confusing introductions, inappropriate content, wordiness, and incoherent organization 12 Writing and Work Create an outline of the proposed project and translate that outline into a table of contents that lists sections and subsections... to sharing the results of science and engineering that writing often becomes a large part of any job As engineers and scientists move up the organizational ladder, to supervisor and then to manager, they spend more and more time on communication tasks, reviewing and editing the writing of their subordinates as they assume responsibility for meeting group objectives and deadlines Independent consultants . h1" alt="" The MIT Guide to Science and Engineering Communication second edition This page intentionally left blank The MIT Guide to Science and Engineering Communication second edition James. to sharing the results of science and engineering that writing often becomes a large part of any job. As engi- neers and scientists move up the organizational ladder, to supervisor and then to. conversa- tions about their work, revising documents when better information becomes available. Every chapter of this second edition of The MIT Guide to Science and Engineering Communication reflects these changes. The