Sometimes I drive my students mad. And I do it on purpose too. You see, instead of giving them answers to their questions, I give them more questions. I’ll give you an example.
Student: “Please, Bob, should this trade-off table be included in the text or should I move it to the appendix?”
Bob: “Well, that depends. Who do you suppose will be reading it?”
Student: “Why, you are, I guess! I don’t know.”
Bob: “Would you agree maybe, that I am unlikely to read the professional technical reports that you will be writing after your graduation? Would you also agree then, that there must be somebody else who will be reading them, and that it would be wise to figure out who they are?”
Student: “Yeah but you are reading this one and there must be a proper place to put this table. Can’t you just tell us where it is?”
Bob: “Let me put it this way. Why did you make this table in the first place? What do you want your readers to do with it?
Student: “Well, we want them to be able to check whether the argumentation represented in the trade-off table is valid, so that they will understand and accept our choice for the best concept.” (I admit they don’t usually put it quite like this.)
Bob: “Okay. That accounts for its wonderful level of detail. And who would that be doing this checking?”
Student: “That’s easy. Engineers of course!”
Bob: “Excellent! Remind me, what kind of report are you writing again?”
Student: “A management report.”
Bob: “Ah. And do you maybe remember what we discussed during last week’s lesson on presentation skills?”
Student: “Yes, we discussed how there are several different ways to present scores in an oral presentation.”
Bob: “For example?”
Student: “You can give the actual scores, you can use symbols, like pluses and minuses. And colour codes, like red is bad and green is good.”
Bob: “And what might be the reason for the differences between these presentations?”
Student: “That way you can vary the amount of detail depending on your audience’s expertise and needs.”
Bob: “And?”
Student: “You can give them your interpretation of the scores this way.”
Bob: “Brilliant! So how do you think this strategy might be applied in our present situation, considering that you are writing mainly for a manager who just wants to know the outcome of your trade-off and present this to her team?”
Student: “Ah! You mean that we might put this highly detailed version in the appendix for specialists, so they can check our results, and present a low-tech version for the project managers in the body of the report?”
Bob: “Wow!”
Student: “Why did you not just tell us what you wanted?”
Bob: “What would you have learned?”
