I see the goal of the short course as a whole to be:

teach process skills
prepare students for internships
teach content skills

I feel process skills are so important because they are often times not explicitely address in school, are vital being an effective scientist/engineer, and are skills students can use everyday. While content skills are great, we have only a week and most students will quickly forget the concepts (aren't used in their internships, learning many concepts in a short time, etc). The process skills are less likely to be quickly forgotten I think.

An extremely important aspect I wish to get across to the students is effective communication. I wrote a list of communication skills I hope to impart to the students over the short course. A few ideas I had to teach the skills:

1) Metamoments
2) Lecture
3) Presentation feedback

Descriptions:
1) Metamoments (taken from Dave and Sarah S):
We have 3 inquiries + mission design (4 events). Each event  the students will (probably) be working in small groups and making posters or presentations to share out. Each event would focus on one or two communication skills the students should learn, so we can teach 4-8 skills during the week with metamoments. Each instructor will work with their group during a metamoment to teach the skill.

A metamoment is a short (2-5 minute) time where the instructor will ask the students to think about a concept and the students will give feedback. An example of this program:

Inquiry 1: Students will focus on figures and proper bulleting. Before starting the poster making, the instructor for each group will come up and ask the students to come up with a few ideas on what makes good figures in a presentation (large, clearly labeled, described during the presentation). The instructor will keep a list (perhaps a poster) of these concepts. 

At the end of the week, most/all of the communication skills should have been made aware to the students. A presentation on Friday will sum up what the students have learned (to make concrete the concepts). Any concepts the instructors feel were lacking will be discussed more in depth.

(This metamoment concept depends on Sarah S's approval and if it fits into her goals for the inquiry. It seems like a good place to have them to me.)

2) A lecture could be a normal 30-60min talk about the concepts of good communication skills. This is fairly boring and I don't think the students will get the concepts as well as I would like.

3) A feedback lecture is an instructor gives a 'bad' presentation and the students give feedback on what they thought was wrong (it may be after each slide to set concrete examples). 

For example, one slide is about figures. The figure may be too small, not labeled, and the talking part of the presentation doesn't ever refer to the figure. The students would be asked to think what was wrong about the slide (and hopefully come up with at least the three concepts previously stated). A follow up slide would then have the 'correct' figures, etc.