Paper ID #35689A Pilot Interdisciplinary Robotic Mentorship Project to StudyEngineering Soft Skill DevelopmentDr. WenYen Huang, SUNY New Paltz WenYen (Jason) Huang, huangj18@newpaltz.edu, is Assistant Professor of Mathematics Education in the Department of Teaching and Learning at SUNY-New Paltz. Jason has a particular interest in utiliz- ing technology for enhancing student’s understanding and improving teacher’s instruction in the STEM classroom. He is a former high school mathematics teacher.Dr. Ping-Chuan Wang, State University of New York at New Paltz Dr. Ping-Chuan Wang is an Assistant Professor in the Division of
performance, while 81% of the students reported that theassignments stimulated their creative and critical thinking skills. The survey results presented inFigure 5 affirms some of the benefits associated with project based assignments that have beenreported in literature. Hadim and coworkers have reported advantages such as improved classparticipation and better promotion of critical thinking skills, while Felder and coworkers havereported improved comprehension and retention with project based assignments. [16], [17] Otherbenefits of project-based learning that extend beyond improved learning capabilities includedevelopment of soft-skills in students. Figure 6 shows student survey responses to questionsrelated to the development of soft skills
ofalternative learning pedagogies such as in-class training that integrate students’ developmentskills in addition to technical contents.Background and MotivationFrom providing access to clean water to managing large-scale infrastructure projects, thegrand challenges that engineers face in the modern world are equally technical and social. Toovercome these challenges, engineers must not only become experts on the technical aspectsof their specific field but also develop their soft skills, such as communication andpresentation skills, to enable leveraging their technical knowledge in an evolving,increasingly complex and globalized work environment. In today’s world, wheremulticultural teams are encouraged and considered the norm rather than an exception
that require real-time coding on whiteboards,with paper and pencil, or using a simple text editor [11, 13].Currently, multiple papers review the hard and soft skills necessary for career success, [14–19],which skills are knowledge deficiencies for recent graduates [20–25], and a few papers mentionthe hiring process broadly [11, 13, 26]. However, more work is needed to describe what hiring incomputing looks like, and what employers want from applicants. Furthermore, many reports andarticles state that there is a diversity problem in computing, but rarely do these works examinehow viable candidates are lost during the hiring process. Before we can identify biases in thesystem, it is necessary to first gather the existing work on the hiring
materials involved working with software engineering techniques or tools,to facilitate coverage of the topics. Many of the activities implemented in the course have beenused successfully with several groups of students and their evolution benefited from feedbackprovided by the students and faculty.This paper describes the authors’ experiences using active learning materials in an onlinesoftware engineering course. This course was offered to students taking it either synchronously(via online Zoom meetings) or asynchronously (without Zoom class meetings). Soft skills areimportant for engineering professionals and the authors wanted to provide opportunities foronline students to develop these skills on team projects by encouraging asynchronous
sociotechnical challenges related toenergy. The course was developed to provide an “integrated” approach to energy concepts thatcrossed disciplinary boundaries. We collected data from interviews to explore how studentsdescribed their decision to major in engineering and tensions with subsequent descriptions ofwhat is engineering. Preliminary results indicate that the sociotechnical divide still exists in theengineering culture amongst these students. Although students talked about social aspects ofengineering work, these are seen as lesser, rather than a fundamental part of, engineeringproblem solving. Students continued to make a distinction between “soft” skills and engineeringskills, while simultaneously describing the “soft” skills as necessary to
-learning strategies, Fourth Industrial Revolution, Critical Thinking, Cognitive Flexibility and development of soft skills in engineering. She teaches courses on the implementation of Educational Innovation strategies as: Development of Creativity and Innovation Techniques, Development of Transversal Skills and Competencies, Development of Critical Thinking and Case Analysis, Problem Solving through Lateral Thinking and Design Thinking. Dr. Caratozzolo is Se- nior Member of IEEE and member of the IEEE Industry Applications Society (IAS), Power and Energy Society (PES) and Women in Engineering (WIE). She is also a member of the International Association of Continuing Engineering Education (IACEE).Prof. Anna Friesel
management expertise,” Decision Support Systems, vol. 21, no. 2, pp. 51–60, Oct. 1997, doi: 10.1016/S0167-9236(97)00017-1.[6] S. Gillard, “Soft Skills and Technical Expertise of Effective Project Managers,” Issues in Informing Science and Information Technology, vol 6, pp. 723-729, 2009. doi: 10.28945/1092[7] E. Miskioglu and K. Martin, “Is it Rocket Science or Brain Science? Developing an Instrument to Measure ‘Engineering Intuition,’” in 2019 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition Proceedings, Tampa, Florida, Jun. 2019. doi: 10.18260/1-2--33027.[8] J. Saldaña, The coding manual for qualitative researchers. SAGE Publications Limited, 2021.[9 J. Walther, N. W. Sochacka, and N. N. Kellam, “Quality in Interpretive
widelyacknowledged that graduating engineers require a lot more skills that simply doing workedexamples about a single component of an entire engineering system, such as leadership,teamwork, and communication skills [17,18].Well-planned and well-conceived assessments can provide the opportunity to expand anddevelop these required soft skills at the same time as maintaining the ability to assess courseeffectiveness against ABET student learning outcomes and provide a ranking system of studentsfor future employers. Writing Across the Curriculum [19] is one example of this, where writingand communication exercises are incorporated into all aspects of the curriculum including thetechnical subjects that are often assessed only through worked problems. The
annual earnings. However, minorities continue to be underrepresented in scienceand engineering fields as reported by the National Science Board, Science & EngineeringIndicators. This work-in-progress project presents our attempts to tackle the challenges andimprove undergraduate training in EE program. Considering that the next generation electricalengineers should be exposed to the latest technology and have significant technical and scientificcapabilities, deep interdisciplinary understandings, and soft skills such as self-learning abilitiesand communication competence, Cyber-physical systems (CPS)/Internet of Things (IoT), thefeasible and effective platforms to present the undergraduate EE students with various sub-disciplines of EE, are
5-wk duration.It’s to be noted that this is the first series of experimental 5-week sub-track courses with the importantresearch goal of assessing very preliminary student awareness , knowledge and attitude in the publicsector context. Laboratory programs (in class and out of class) were designed to provide an experientialexposure of the professional skill(soft skills) and interdisciplinary skills which are the many benefits ofproject managementsSurveys administered at the start and end of 3-weeks of instruction (N=42) covered awareness, knowledge,and student attitude for the public sector. Results revealed a 70% awareness increase, an unchanged 90 %agreement on the value of the engineers’ duty to welfare of society, and a marginal desire
PLTLOnly two articles surrounding implementations of PLTL were found and indicated that PLTLmay show promise for improving self-efficacy, defined as “a person’s belief in their ability tosucceed in a particular situation” [41] for peer leaders and female CS students. Additionally,PLTL was mentioned in a case study to have impacted a female Hispanic/Latina CS transferstudent’s content knowledge and sense of belonging.The first article reported improvement in PLTL peer leaders’ self-efficacy, content knowledge,and soft skills. Their findings [42], collected through a Science Teaching Efficacy BeliefInstrument (STEBI), showed that 60-80% of students viewed PLTL as an experience thatsupported their teaching skill development, communication skills
skills, interpersonal skills,community and citizenship knowledge, leadership skills, professional effectiveness, informationand communication literacy, critical thinking, and self-management skills. This study exploredundergraduate engineering students’ perceptions of their generic skills competency as it relates toindividual demographics. Utilizing the Generic Skills Perception Questionnaire, 158 engineeringstudents at a research university located in the Midwest responded to the survey providingfeedback on their capabilities in the different generic skills. The survey found that womenindicated higher levels of perceived competency in several of the generic soft skills than men.Additionally, the minority racial and ethnic students perceived
materialcovered in different undergraduate courses related to technical skills, like concepts of structures,construction, and drafting, and soft skills like oral presentations, team working, and writing areport.The redrawing of detailing using AutoCAD® and the development of a material take-off (MTO)are useful to verify the geometry of the numerical model and the results from the structuralanalysis software. Additionally, these tasks challenge students to develop a better understandingof the construction process.The Travis St. Bridge drawings show several details of the supports, steel beams, slab, and safetyrailing, along with the design truck used. However, the steel type is not shown, requiringstudents to make a bibliographic research to find the
theirpresence is in alignment with appropriate social etiquette and communication skills. In addition, another area where cooperative learning is especially impactful is in the developmentof employability skills. Employability skills refer to those basic skills that are necessary for anindividual to obtain, maintain, and succeed in meaningful employment. Students expect to leaveschool after having gained the skills, knowledge and ability to earn a job [38]. These skills include notonly basic academic skills but higher-level thinking skills and the so-called “soft skills” such as timemanagement, communication, punctuality and cooperation [39]. Research Based Teaching Practices (RBTPs)As briefly discussed earlier, Research Based
learning proposed challenges in the implementation of this course.Students and faculty were surveyed about the challenges that they faced during the pandemic.These challenges are summarized in Table 3. Table 3. Challenges from COVID-19 pandemic Perspective Specific Challenges Students’ • Fewer check-ins with faculty and peers; virtual space removes the need. specific Email is used more frequently, barriers to • No opportunities to make new friends or interact with new people—without optimal which exposure to new ideas is lessened. learning • In person interaction with diverse faculty and students also helps students develop “soft skills” needed for industry jobs so not
experiences) 3.57 Community support (e.g., family, religious groups) 3.39 “Soft skills” such as ability to network, negotiate, resolve conflicts 3.37 Academic aptitude (e.g., IQ, mastery of content knowledge) 3.32 Peer support 3.25 Faculty support and interactions other than with advisor 3.20 Relationship with Advisor 3.18 Ability to deal effectively with ambiguity 3.18 Prior knowledge about graduate school, graduate
, but incorporate complementary topics that can potentially strengthen the professional, personal, employability and soft skills of pre-college students. 2. As reported in [13], minimizing the gender stereotype in a teaching and learning environment enables a sense of belonging and an increases engagement. The use of female role models was actively adopted by this program to mitigate the gender stereotype and increase the engagement of Hispanic female pre-college students. The workshop facilitators and mentors were female individuals from either academia or industry. From the post-workshop survey for pre-college students, having female role models and mentors contributed to increasing the confidence of
team. The responsibilities of eachposition help to develop soft skills that are necessary for engineering practice upon graduation.[14] Not only do these organizations provide necessary skills and networks for student success,but a higher level of student involvement through out-of-class experiences, in general, promotesthe development of a better-quality learning environment, an essential aspect of promoting 1student success in engineering. [1] Moreover, a viable student organization can foster cohesionthat benefits the program and institution at large while at the same time accommodating thenontraditional student’s challenging time constraints
Internship Preparation Phuong Truong, Karcher Morris, Nicholas Stein, Katie Hsieh, Ravi Patel, Farnia Nafarifard, Chen Du, Kien Nguyen, Truong Nguyen Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering University of California San DiegoAbstractIn this paper, we present a five-week summer internship preparatory program for electrical andcomputer engineering transfer students that addresses technical and professional internshippreparatory needs through distance learning format. The program was delivered virtually andprovided a comprehensive experience of technical skill building (Python, electronics, machinelearning, app development) and professional development (soft
andcolleagues in campus offices. In part, these elements make us good teachers. Prior to March2020, face-to-face interaction was the way we taught, collaborated, served and learned. Then,COVID-19 became real and, within a week, we could no longer be physically present with ourstudents and peers. We shifted instruction to Emergency Remote Teaching (ERT). We alsoshifted the way we collaborated in our scholarship and service. Informed by research, this paperhighlights aspects of our journey, challenges along the way and lessons learned to apply to thefuture.As educators in a predominately engineering university, the courses we teach address identifiedgaps in traditional engineering education and focus on the “soft skills” [1]. Team-based learningand team
-rangeof students from K-12 [2] to doctoral [5]. At the undergraduate engineering level, mentorshipprograms are one way educators are working to close the workforce-readiness gap in graduates[6][7][8].Industry Scholars Mentorship Program (ISMP)The University of San Diego’s Shiley-Marcos School of Engineering (SMSE) Industry ScholarsProgram (ISP) engages a dozen faculty-nominated, highly engaged, and academically excellingsophomore students in a year-long program to foster their development in professional networking,interviewing, emotional intelligence and other “soft skills” not typically taught as part of theengineering curriculum through workshops, site visits and internships. In Fall 2018, we launchedthe Industry Scholars Mentorship Program
technology and a real world, experiential learningexperience. They acquire skills needed for their future employment. Veteran teacher coachesprovide valuable leadership, guidance, attention to detail, and professionalism, which are allhighly sought by the industry. Soft skills go beyond just regular classroom experience andparticipation in such experiences is beneficial to both students and teachers.ConclusionAfter departing the military, veterans have a broad range of needs in terms of future careers. Agood number of them join the Career Switchers programs, in which they establish new skills andget training to become future career and technical education teachers. However, current curriculain career switchers programs focus on pedagogy and
reports simply called for even more modernengineers.Figure 1: A visual depiction of new competencies needed by engineers upon review of theGrinter Report (1995) and the Vision of the Engineer of 2020 Reports (2004 and 2005).Even from an accreditation perspective, in 1997, ABET released Engineering Criteria 2000which made it clear that engineering education needed to include these global, societal,economic, and environmental mindsets in future engineers [4]. The incorporation of what arecommonly termed “soft skills” in engineering curriculum, including teamwork, communication,ethics, and social consciousness, were soon considered a necessity. Engineering coursework hadalready garnered a reputation as being content-heavy, so innovative and unique
participants (n = 10) developed skills to cope with HC. “Developingskills” means that participants develop academic skills, such as taking courses, learning to solveengineering problems, practicing soft skills, or pursuing interests as a way to negotiate someaspect of their personal and engineering identity. Majority and minoritized women used thisstrategy similarly (6% vs. 5%). For example, a Hispanic/Latina industrial engineering graduatestudent noted that because she was an honors student, a tennis player, and worked, she “learnedto organize and manage my time and your tranquility in a cost-effective way to achieveeverything successfully.” This participant aligned her skills and identity to match normativeengineering skillsets, so she developed
. M. , Mitchell, T. D. (2015). Learning Communities: Foundations for First-Year Students’ Development of Pluralistic Outcomes. Learning Communities Research and Practice, 3(2), Article 2. Available at: http://washingtoncenter.evergreen.edu/lcrpjournal/vol3/iss2/2[9] Pascarella, E. T., & Terenzini, P. T. (2005). How college affects students: Vol. 2. A third decade of research. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.[10] J E Froyd and M W Ohland, “Integrated engineering curricula,” Journal of Engineering Education, vol. 94, no.1, pp. 147–164, 2005.[11] Mikko-Ville Apiola and Mikko-Jussi Laakso. 2019. The Impact of Self-Theories to Academic Achievement and Soft Skills in Undergraduate CS Studies:First
wifi 6. 11 programs with 28 certificates and 6 degrees access. 7. 17 Industry Recognized Certifications 7. Leverage existing industry partnerships 8. Digital Divide Project throughout the district to engage them in the areas we want to develop. 8. Soft skills for students wanting to get into the workforce. 9. Professional Development (workforce skills and equity and inclusion practices
art. Yet, Dan’s academic plan to support his well-being and be happy are highly criticized. Dan’s vision long-term goal to be employable hasn’t happened and locates himself as “sitting in a void” reconciling with how to modify his plan or where things went wrong. Dan’s internalized yearly failures - the first 2 years of co-op/intern rejections as his lack of soft skills (being personable) and the third year as bad luck because of COVID—are from poor planning that should have been more career-oriented. Dan found the arts helpful to his personal growth and related more to these participating members than engineers. Reflecting Dan grapples with what he should’ve done,“ I shouldn't have made that um, I guess that happiness my
, “Engineering the World,” Online J. Glob. Eng. Educ., vol. 3, no. 2, Aug. 2008, [Online]. Available: https://digitalcommons.uri.edu/ojgee/vol3/iss2/2.[12] L. Ferrante Perrone, “Foreign Language and the Globally Competent Engineer: More Than Just a ‘Soft Skill,’” Online J. Glob. Eng. Educ., vol. 9, no. 1, Jun. 2017, [Online]. Available: https://digitalcommons.uri.edu/ojgee/vol9/iss1/2.[13] A. Mazzurco, B. Jesiek, and K. Ramane, “Are Engineering Students Culturally Intelligent?: Preliminary Results from a Multiple Group Study,” in 2012 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition Proceedings, San Antonio, Texas, Jun. 2012, p. 25.204.1-25.204.10, doi: 10.18260/1-2--20964.[14] B. K. Jesiek, S. E. Woo, S. Parrigon, and C. M. Porter