Engineering at York University, Canada. Before beginning his academic career, Dr. Czekanski worked for over 10 years in the automotive sector. Dr. Czekanski attention is dedicated to newly established Lassonde School of Engineering (York). He devotes his efforts towards the enrichment of Renaissance Engineering program by including interdisciplinary learning, industry collaboration and designing for positive social impact which contributes to the uniqueness of York’s engineering program. As an active participant in the establishment of the undergraduate and graduate Mechanical Engineering programs, his attention is devoted to providing students with both experiential learning and soft skills
, civil,biomedical, electrical, and mechanical engineering [1-7]. Considered a critical instructionalstrategy for aiding students in developing durable professional “soft” skills [8, 9], team-basedlearning involves collaborative interactions among students to achieve a common design goal.To be sure, the ability to function on teams and communicate effectively are two process skillsthat all engineering students should acquire as a result of completing a post-secondary programof study in engineering [10]. In engineering, team-based learning often occurs through product orprocess design projects. While the details of team-based design projects may vary by discipline,in general, they have three features. First, they present an open-ended problem to
—is of paramountimportance.The importance of communication within the engineering industry has prompted an ideologicalshift in higher education—especially regarding the skills engineering students should possess.Learning outcomes of engineering students are moving from emphasis on students’ technicalabilities towards what are termed ‘soft skills’ that complement technical expertise—one suchskill being successful communication. In fact, the main accrediting board for the Engineeringfield—the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET)—listed the students’“ability to communicate effectively with a range of audiences” (ABET, 2017) as one of its maincriteria for institutions seeking accreditation. Troy and Liang (2019) echo this
instruction canfoster the development of soft skills critical to success in the work place (Stohlman et al., 2011).For example, integrated ETS instruction promotes collaboration, compromise, problem solving,and communication (Hmelo-Silver, 2004; Stohlman et al., 2011; Wang et al., 2013). These softskills are becoming increasingly important to employers (Jones et al., 2017; Mardis et al., 2018;Patacsil & Tablatin, 2017).Technology and EngineeringTechnology integration has been encouraged for decades within general science education (e.g.,Bull & Bell, 2008; Hilton & Honey, 2011) and more recently within the engineeringopportunities teachers integrate into their science instruction (e.g., Wang et al., 2011, Maeng &Gonczi, 2020
withwaterfall-like processes, the support for agile processes, which are widely used nowadays, waslimited. Also, using computer simulation often makes it difficult to exercise certain SPM skills,particularly soft skills and human aspects of managing a team. The approaches reported in [18]and [19] focus on practicing SPM skills but outside of a long-term software development project([18] focuses on producing a paper and a presentation; [19] focuses on a game of sortingcandy).Other course collaborations not necessarily related to SPM have been reported. These includestudies of the feasibility of distributing large SE projects across the academic curriculum [20];students from different courses collaborating by taking different roles in a simulated