teaching others the skills they have learned, and the beliefthat they have deeper grasp with the fundamentals of engineering and problem solving.ResultsPreliminary data has been gathered for the beginning of the semester survey as well as the mid-yearsurvey. Currently two surveys regarding the opinions and attitude changes of students have beenadministered, where a self-reflection on given questions was answered. The provided questions were splitinto two categories: a technical skills section and a soft skills section. The technical skills sectionconsisted of five questions asking the students’ opinions regarding their own proficiency in soldering,multimeter and power/hand tool usage, circuit diagnosis and device repair. The other category
in their own section(s) anddivide the classes up into student groups of 4-5 students. Our instructional team consistscompletely of teaching professionals (non-tenure track faculty) with a variety of backgroundsand industry experience. In order to make mentoring 10 to 20 teams tractable, all students teamscomplete the same design challenge. Creating a “good” design challenge is crucial, as the coursedoes more than simply teach the design process (see Figure 1). Teaming and leadership skills,project management, ethics, and technical communication are important outcomes for the course.All of these “Soft-skill” areas are made more palatable to our students if our design challenge isengaging and fun.With eleven different engineering disciplines
-dimensional,four-science survey also measures development in 23 soft skills and social emotionalperceptions. DISC comprises four behaviors: Dominance, Influencing, Steadiness, andCompliance. The six Indigo Assessment Motivators are Theoretical, Utilitarian, Aesthetic,Social, Individualistic and Traditional. Some observations from the 2015 data includeindications that the program attracts and develops high potential entrepreneurs, that theseengineering students are particularly high Theoreticals (passion for learning), and aregenerally well-rounded and varied in terms of behavior styles and motivations. In 2017,the same set of students (now seniors) has been re-assessed as part of the ongoing DU andIndigo partnership.Comparing these data sets, along
]. Evaluation procedures wereformulated that allow for the measurement of technical and soft skills in students. Different metrics wereestablished for the following four student content categories: 1) technical content; 2) soft skills; 3)course/project management and 4) team dynamics. Technical content and management categories focusedon student deliverables whereas, team dynamics were the internal relationships within the team. Thegeneral timeline for when different assignments and assessments were deployed throughout the academicsyear is shown in Figure 1. Figure 1: Schematic Timeline of, Student Work, Assessments, and Faculty Interactions.To evaluate the technical and soft skill assignments, nine different metrics used which were provided to
. The teaching component involved development and delivery of a course on EmbeddedSystems for engineering students. The guest lectures involved presenting topics on how toincorporate “soft skills” into the curriculum to address industry needs. Through this effort,Electrical Engineering (EE) and Electrical Engineering Technology (EET) faculty in the hostcountry learned new skills that will ultimately impact students in EE and EET throughout thecountry through a continuously updated curriculum. In turn, these graduating students will bebetter prepared for the workforce by learning current skills needed by industry. An engineeringeducation research phase sought to identify the reasons, challenges, and motivations forconsidering engineering as
successful career in journalism and marketing, Graham launched Bigger Pie Strategies, a marketing company formed in 2010, and co-founded Serious Soft Skills LLC, an education and training company, in 2017.Dr. Pamela H. Sheff, Johns Hopkins University Pam Sheff is the Director of the Center for Leadership Education and the Master of Science in Engineering Management Program at Johns Hopkins University. Prior to returning to academia, Dr. Sheff built Sheff and Lano Communications, a marketing and communications consulting firm, specializing in developing public and in-house communications for corporate, institutional and government clients. A.M. Harvard University Ph.D. Harvard UniversityEvelyn Carolina Torres-Alfaro, Johns
from this class is that soft skills are a very important part of your success and you need to develop them. There is always room for improvement in soft skills…from this course, I have learned about corporate culture, personal growth, professional responsibilities, useful project management techniques, and property rights. I have already begun using the project management knowledge for my design team. From this course, I realized that culture awareness is very important. I never realized how important it is in the field of engineering until going through this course. This course also made me realized that much of the skills needed to be great engineers could only be gained with experiences
between engineering and human kind as a soft skill because to me that’s the most technical skill, to be able to know what’s right to do when.Another interviewee echoed a similar sentiment with “people talking about the professionalskills, the hard skills and soft skills… we call them professional skills… I think in reality,those skills are much harder to learn.” Both of these educators found that calling ethical andsocietal skills “soft” is a disservice to their complexity since these skills can be the mostchallenging to teach and learn. Another interviewee expressed that even calling these skillsprofessional does not do them justice since they are inextricably part of the engineering. People used to call them soft skills… then people started
manufacturing at the ASlevel, and a solid grounding in manufacturing supervision and operations at the BS level.Graduates of this program have enjoyed 100% placement within a variety of local companies,although most are placed in the area of automotive manufacturing.ConclusionA common issue emerged when discussing the MDT degree with employers, that issue being theemployers’ desire for new graduates to be stronger in the so-called “soft skills” of oral andwritten communication and working in a team environment. While the technical andmanufacturing-themed courses built into the various MDT plans of study are crucial, thus far thecompanies with which we are working are willing to trade off some technical courses in order toinclude courses and subjects
girls in Guilford county. She has also worked with the STEM of the Triad home-schooled children at Winston-Salem, North Carolina. In 2017, Dr. Ofori-Boadu established the REAL Professional Development Network for developing the leadership, networking, and other soft skills of undergraduate students at NCAT. She is married to Victor Ofori-Boadu and they are blessed with three wonderful children. c American Society for Engineering Education, 20181 Improving Middle-School Girls’ Knowledge, Self-Efficacy, and Interest in ‘Sustainable Construction Engineering’ through the STEAM ACTIVATED! ProgramUniversities provide informal educational opportunities to cultivate
potential benefits of CBA include user-authenticated,consistent, and fair testing, while facilitating auto-grading and statistical analysis of assessmentresults. Ideally, CBA could increase the frequency and value of formative feedback withinEngineering courses, relative to conventional paper-based exams which are prevalent. However,since multiple-choice question formats are inherently restrictive, an open challenge facing CBAis how to fully assess skills within Engineering disciplines. Specific assessment needs includefree-form design approaches, abstract concepts, analytical formulas, plots/graphs, problem-solving skills, and soft skills. These require innovations for realization within the quiz deliverycapabilities of today’s Learning Management
environment (ALOE) to provide a practical learning environmentthat facilitates developing many of the needed technical and soft skills without the inherentdifficulty and cost associated with radio frequency components and regulation. We define sixlearning stages that assimilate the standardization process and identify key learning objectivesfor each. We discuss our experiences when employing the proposed methodology at BarcelonaTech in Spain, compare the approach with an equivalent class at Virginia Tech in the US andmake the following observations: (1) The complexity of standards need to be abstracted andpresented in a form suitable for a given class. (2) Educating about cellular communicationsstandards is most effective when students are immersed
forced them to manage their time better tomeet deadlines. “practicing being clear and concise while meeting time goals/constraints."II: Outreach and Engineering Skills and KnowledgeAside from its influence on social skills, students indicated that outreach helped them polish theirunderstanding of Engineering concepts and forced them to enhance their presentation skills. "Outreach not only helps cement what I already know but also builds soft skills that can also be applied to classes and life. Outreach helped me get my foot in the door for my internship." "Outreach broaden my horizons and helped me to better understand some tough topics."III: Outreach and STEMUpon establishing the outreach event, one of the primary
first cohort of doctoral students participating in thepilot program.Training ModelTraining in professional or “soft” skills, although not new in graduate education, is commonlydone on an ad hoc basis, as a ‘bolt on’ to a student’s program of study. Further, professional skillstraining is often targeted towards career placement and generally offered to students who areadvanced in their graduate studies. While there has no doubt been some success in following thisimplicit approach, we sought to explore how a more explicit approach might better serve STEMgraduate students.The innovative model (see Figure 2) piloted through the GS LEAD program challenges thatparadigm by positioning critical professional skills development [15], [13], [5] at the
identify theircultural capital from which to develop their future possible selves as engineers. Throughout thefirst two years, students will be mentored to foster their engineering identity while focusing onsupport for transition to college. Support for transition to college includes encouragement andhelp to form peer learning study groups, study habit workshops, note-taking methods, timemanagement, and financial aid-education. Support for engineering identity development in year1, include opportunities to meet industry professionals, visits to industry sites to learn first-handwhat engineering workplaces look like, engage with engineering leaders through a speakerseries, and attend recurring choice-based 2-hour technical and soft skills building
”.Students from the Ruka Project shared that the project “helped [them] understand theculture better when design[ing] for that culture”. Many commented on the synthesis thatthey encountered, such as how “hard and soft skills come together”, “engineeringintersects with the liberal arts” and the “gather[ing] together all of the [design]information helped connect to the country”.Values ThinkingOf the 854 quotes, 214 indicated values thinking. Students commented that the challenge,“did not feel like a class assignment”, that they “got more out of it because it meantsomething [to them]”, and “evoked a real emotional response”. For example, one studentsaid, “I have given lots of 1 minute pitches, but I really cared about giving this one”.Several students
objectives of the course werelargely achieved. Students acquired both hard skills and soft skills such as empathy and an abilityto articulate ethical obligations of engineering professionals to society at-large. The majority ofstudents reported positive outcomes as related to learning about a real-world contemporaryinfrastructure problem and understanding the role of engineers in solving it; engaging in designthinking approach to engineering; working in multidisciplinary collaborative teams; empathizingwith end users; learning to collect and analyze data in order to answer research questions; andpresenting findings and actionable data to professional partners.Implications for the City of SyracuseOverall, the data collected was useful in piloting a
separate designvectors, and to demonstrate the behavior in a physical test or application. The activities will alsoshowcase different modes of failure of mechanical components, and the uncertainty that lieswithin the material itself or within the process of manufacturing. Focusing the activities in a self-learning group environment, students’ learning experience will be greatly improved in tandemwith their soft skills: reporting, communications, and planning [2].To promote a better interest in the overall learning outcomes, the series of activities arestructured to combine their knowledge and culminate to a final project competition for the designof a planar-truss. A competition can bolster the intellectual maturity of students who begin torealize
courses in carpentry, metalworking, or carshop. Teaching and learning today often happens online with advanced educationaltechnology. Humanities and soft-skills have taken a backseat teaching to the test. CADdrafting systems produces renderings for projects. Standards-based education nearlyobliterated vocational education in the late-20th century but CareerTech has reemergedtoday as pre-engineering, information technology, entrepreneurship, and culinary arts.The purpose of this paper is to present a new history curriculum incorporating the historyof technology for STEM students at our community and technical colleges that speaks totheir academic and career interests. The paper demonstrates how history of technologyfulfills outcomes expected of
such asfinance, human resources, and marketing, as well as keep themselves abreast of domain andtechnology developments in relevant areas. They will also have to develop soft skills such asdecision-making, negotiation, and conflict management. Many students have rightly identifieddeveloping knowledge as one of the support areas. Since the Internet is flooded with knowledgeresources, we need to select effective resources that can add value to our prospectiveentrepreneurs. We will also have to develop resources to meet specific requirements such aswater management in that locality.Play down the need of capital Many prospective entrepreneurs have sought support for capital. We must make themaware that once they have a worthwhile business
. 402-7.[19] National Academy of Engineering of the National Academies, The engineer of 2020:Visions of engineering in the new century. 2004, Washington, DC: National Academies Press.[20] Clarke, M. "Addressing the soft skills crisis." Strategic HR Review, Vol. 15 no. 3, 2016,pp.137-139.[21] Tech Directors. "Career Directions," 10, 2003, pp. 22-23.[22] Dewey, J. How We Think. A Restatement of the Relation of Reflective Thinking to theEducative Process (Revised ed.), Boston: D. C. Heath. 1933.[23] Daley, B. “Novice to expert: An exploration of how professionals learn.” Adult EducationQuarterly Vol. 49 no. 4, Summer, 1999, pp 133-147.[24] Kaufman, H. G. “Obsolescence and retraining of technical professionals: A researchperspective.” The Journal
leadershipprograms in universities. As noted by Bayless and Robe, many engineering educators have beenresistant to include engineering leadership within the engineering curriculum, considering it a“soft skill, not relevant to the discipline,” and thus potentially redirecting resources orinstructional time from technical material [6].Another impediment in the development of programs on engineering leadership is the nebulousdefinition of the term itself. Although several authors have attempted to summarize thecharacteristics required of effective engineering leaders (see for example Farr, et al. [7,8] andGoodale [9] for early work), Rottmann, et al. showed that there is a lack of consensus ondefining engineering leadership among different professional cohorts
), 3 manuscripts under review, 29 presentations at national conferences, and 27 poster sessions. In 2016, her publication was recognized by the Built Environment Project and Asset Management Journal as the 2016 Highly Commended Paper. In 2015, Dr. Ofori-Boadu established her STEM ACTIVATED! program for middle-school girls in Guilford county. She has also worked with the STEM of the Triad home-schooled children at Winston-Salem, North Car- olina. In 2017, Dr. Ofori-Boadu established the REAL Professional Development Network for developing the leadership, networking, and other soft skills of undergraduate students at NCAT. Dr. Andrea Ofori- Boadu also serves as the Executive Vice-President of Penuel Consult
Assessment of Soft Skills and Hard Skills," Journal of Information Technology Education, vol. 11, (1), 2012.[8] L. E. Gueldenzoph and G. L. May, "Collaborative Peer Evaluation: Best Practices for Group Member Assessments," Business Communication Quarterly, vol. 65, (1), pp. 9- 20, 2002.[9] S. Fallows and B. Chandramohan, "Multiple Approaches to Assessment: Reflections on use of tutor, peer and self-assessment," Teaching in Higher Education, vol. 6, (2), pp. 229246, 2001.[10] A. Erez, J. A. Lepine and H. Elms, "Effects of Rotated Leadership and Peer Evaluation on the Functioning and Effectiveness of Self-Managed Teams: A QuasiExperiment," Person. Psychol., vol. 55,(4), pp. 929-948, 2002.[11] D. F. Baker, "Peer Assessment in
paper organizes student responses into two areas: (i) howinvolvement on the research team has impacted their personal engineering development(technical and soft skills, networking, and other professional development), and (ii) projectprogress and communication.Research Team Effect on Personal Engineering DevelopmentA major benefit that the students found in working on this research team were the technical andinterpersonal skills they developed through practical engineering experience. ClemsonUniversity’s Creative Inquiry program facilitated multidisciplinary research on the design of amedical device which engaged students in mechanical engineering, bioengineering, marketing,and nursing departments. These students indicated their participation
alack of understanding during classroom activities [11]. Other studies have suggested that there isno significant differences in the learning outcomes of students in traditional lecture coursesversus flipped courses and that those in less affluent areas may have difficulty with accessing thetechnology needed to complete the course [10].The studies identified above are relevant to engineering education and to specific engineeringdisciplines. As engineering education requires soft-skill development to meet industry needs, thequestion arises as to the effectiveness of the flipped classroom technique in engineeringleadership courses. However, the exploration of a flipped classroom strategy implemented in anengineering leadership course is not found