Discover Camp in Hawthorne, NY. He also volunteers as the Dutchess District STEM Coordinator for the Greater Hudson Valley Council of the Boy Scouts of America, running several STEM workshops a year. ©American Society for Engineering Education, 2023 Robotics Mentorship as a Cross-disciplinary Platform to Foster Engineering Soft SkillsAbstractAn interdisciplinary robotics mentorship program was initiated in the Fall of 2019 to study softskill development in undergraduate engineering students. The primary objective of this programis to design and implement an effective learning model to foster engineering students’development of soft skills through collaboration with
, we were only planning to engage students in simple linear conditionals, but students pushed themechanics of Bitsy beyond our expectations and created cyclical game loops (returning to game levelsmultiple times). In addition to mechanical skills, students were also introduced to “soft skills” through thedesign/feedback/iteration process we integrated into the workshop, which also adhered to a standard (CSTA2-IC-22; [8]).Workshop Design The workshop, entitled "Designing Games for Change" leverages the user-friendly game engine,Bitsy, to make computer science accessible to students with no prior programming experience. The gamescreated in Bitsy have a pixel-art style, with a limited color palette and small resolution, and provide youth
-learning projects to evaluate the impact onstudent learning and partners benefits, we have received great feedback from both Crime Stoppersand our students.One of the students who worked on the project reported her experience by saying: “Working on this project has given me the opportunity to develop my technical and non-technical skills. I was able to practice some of the skills I learned in my courses at HCU and improve upon my soft skills - such as communication, problem-solving, 4 and self-motivation - through working together with my co-workers, having meetings with my supervisor and working on the projects assigned to me. Overall, I can see how the things I learned
didn't really know that other people weren't developing those skills, and also didn't realize the value that those soft skills have in a professional environment. In engineering school, you spend all this time learning the math and science, and then when you get to a real job, that's maybe 50% of your work. And the other 50% is working with people and resolving conflict. […] So, I consider it a really valuable learning experience now. (Erin)Along the same lines, Chris shared: I don't think I realized at the time essentially most of what I'm saying now in terms of the benefit of stakeholder involvement, of customer discovery interviews, of really having a partner in development. I think that
andhelping younger students learn more about different disciplines. For programs that involveyounger facilitators, such as college students, there is less of a generation gap between studentparticipants and the facilitators. This smaller age gap can be advantageous because the K-12student participants may relate more to facilitators who are closer in age (Aguayo, 2018).In addition to helping student participants learn new information and skills, these programs alsohelp facilitators grow and develop. For example, outreach programs help undergraduate andgraduate students gain professional development experience and develop both technical skillsand soft skills including communication and presentation skills. Scherrer (2013) noted that animprovement in
: Theyparticipants are likely to face in their professional careers, thus explore IBM Cloud Services [2] . Programming interfaces:enhancing their experience and skills in a practical, hands-on They work with Node-RED [3]. Artificial intelligence: Theymanner. engage with IBM’s AI Watson. The Hack-a-Thon not only focuses on technical skills devel-opment but also emphasizes the cultivation of soft skills such ascommunication, teamwork, and time management. By the end ofthe event, participants are expected to present their projects toa panel of industry experts and faculty, demonstrating not onlytheir technical prowess but also their ability to communicatetheir ideas effectively. This
development of qualitative tools to investigate the impact that these opportunitiesmay have had had. Further studies should investigate and isolate external factors such asdemographic or educational experiences beyond the courses., and in-course experiences, thatmay be related to intercultural competency development among engineers. 12 Bibliography[1] H. Rittel and M. Webber, “Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning,” p. 16, 1973.[2] M. Moritz and N. Kawa, “The World Needs Wicked Scientists,” Am. Sci., vol. 110, no. 4, p. 212, 2022, doi: 10.1511/2022.110.4.212.[3] M. T. Hora, R. J. Benbow, and B. B. Smolarek, “Re-thinking Soft Skills and Student
partnerships fall into each of the content areas, allowing students to makeclear connections between professional opportunities within their community and the informationpresented in class. The project-based course content offers opportunities for students to engage ingrowing soft skills like critical thinking and collaboration, as well as technical skills with tasks suchas building circuits and learning computer coding. Students in the program have participated inindustry and university tours, and also receive mentoring from engineering college-aged students whocome to their school during the DeSIRE class period. Lastly, a subset of interested students may optto participate in a university-sponsored STEM program which offers recurring
research and design (i.e. apprenticeship style) projects have naturally been theprimary avenues for student research, as they remain the major modes of quantitative explorationin STEM professional and academic fields [12]. However, there are other presumed merits to theresearch interview approach utilized here in the STEM environment: ● It forces students to confront the impact of science and engineering on a broad population. ● It can “humanize” STEM work, connecting data to people. ● It strengthens soft skills like communication, socialization, and ethics. ● It provides additional training beyond lab or workshop attributes. ● It familiarizes students with government policies that intersect with their