Conference Session

They're Not "Soft" Skills!

Collection

2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Eckehard Doerry, Northern Arizona University; James Dean Palmer, Northern Arizona University

Tagged Divisions

Educational Research and Methods

student grades basedon individual performance. Despite the minimalist philosophy shaping the evolution of ourapproach, truly effective use of the system developed requires substantial time investment by theinstructor; we close by outlining an online system we are developing to largely automate theteam management process. Benefits of automation include real-time feedback to instructor andteam members, automated flagging of potential trouble, and automatic documentation ofcontributions/performance for individual team members.1.0 IntroductionThe past decades have brought a growing awareness of the value of integrating training in abroad range of “soft skills” – including teaming, project management, and oral and writtencommunication – into the

Conference Session

They're Not "Soft" Skills!

Collection

2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Susan M. Lord, University of San Diego; Candice Stefanou, Bucknell University; Michael J. Prince, Bucknell University; John Chen, California Polytechnic State University; Jonathan D. Stolk, Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering

Tagged Divisions

Educational Research and Methods

Conference Session

They're Not "Soft" Skills!

Collection

2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Brook Sattler, University of Washington; Ashley Ann Thompson, University of Washington; Jennifer A. Turns, University of Washington; Deborah Kilgore, University of Washington

Tagged Divisions

Educational Research and Methods

Conference Session

They're Not "Soft" Skills!

Collection

2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Roman Taraban, Texas Tech University; Kristin E. Oliver, Texas Tech University

Tagged Divisions

Educational Research and Methods

Conference Session

They're Not "Soft" Skills!

Collection

2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Ruth Wertz P.E., Purdue University, West Lafayette; Meagan C. Ross, Purdue University, West Lafayette; Senay Purzer, Purdue University, West Lafayette; Michael Fosmire, Purdue University Libraries, West Lafayette; Monica E. Cardella, Purdue University, West Lafayette

Tagged Divisions

Educational Research and Methods

Conference Session

Trends in Engineering Education 1

Collection

2014 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Khairiyah Mohd-Yusof, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia; Fatin Aliah Phang, Faculty of Education, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia; Aziatul Niza Sadikin, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia; Syed Ahmad Helmi, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia; Mohd Johari Kamaruddin, Centre of Lipids Engineering & Applied Research (CLEAR), Faculty of Chemical Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 81310 UTM Johor Bahru, Johor, Malaysia.

Tagged Divisions

Educational Research and Methods

future career. In learning engineering knowledge, they also gainsome important soft skills such as communication skills, teamworking skills, problem solvingskills, leadership and so on6. However, in Malaysia, the internship experiences are onlyintroduced to engineering students after the second semester of their third year, right beforetheir senior year. The question is, how can first year engineering students also gain theengineering workplace knowledge, soft skills and motivation to be persistent in pursuingengineering study and eventually engineering career?There are many research on engineering students’ motivation and persistence in pursuingengineering study and career. Concannon & Barrow7 reported that engineering students’persistence

Conference Session

The Critical First Year in Engineering Education

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Jamie Medoff, University of Maryland-Baltimore County; Anne Spence, University of Maryland-Baltimore County

Tagged Divisions

Educational Research and Methods

areas, particularly communication and teaching skills. Ina report entitled Education and Careers 2000: Enhanced Skills for engineers, these “softskills” were reported as fundamental to industry as the engineering skills taught incollege. “The message from industry leaders is that young graduate engineers arriving attheir companies do not possess skills in either the quality or quantity required. Theseextra skills include written and oral communication…”1In a study at the Michigan Technological University, professors were placed in industrysettings for a short time to determine what successful engineers need in the industry. As aresult, they found that “engineers need a variety of soft and hard skills.” Included inthese soft skills were teaming

Conference Session

Institutional and Curricular Reform

Collection

2008 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Pierre Lafleur, Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal; Yves Boudreault, Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal; Richard Prégent, École Polytechnique de Montréal

Tagged Divisions

Educational Research and Methods

describe: • contents and assessment modes for each course; • preferred teaching methods for each course; • description of the process of multiple course integration and interaction; • specific support and supervision of the new students; • integrated projects; • other elements to incorporate in the first year, such as internationalization, soft skills (personal and relational), etc.The following figure shows how the 120 credits four years curriculum of our engineeringprograms were distributed before and after the implementation of the new programs. The oldprograms started with a 30 credits common year of mathematics and science courses followedby a block of 60 credits (2 years) of engineering courses coupled with

Conference Session

Life After Graduation

Collection

2017 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Houshang Darabi, University of Illinois, Chicago; Elnaz Douzali, University of Illinois, Chicago; Fazle Shahnawaz Muhibul Karim, University of Illinois, Chicago; Samuel Thomas Harford, University of Illinois, Chicago, PROMINENT Labs; Hereford Johnson, University of Illinois, Chicago

Tagged Divisions

Educational Research and Methods

that programsmeet and surpass the standards necessary for technical fields; and that programs are “leading theway in innovation, emerging technologies and anticipating the welfare and safety needs of thepublic”9. One of many papers written that discusses the designing and teaching of courses tosatisfy ABET regulations was presented by Richard M. Felder and Rebecca Brent10. Topics suchas ethics and technical skills are readily available, but there is room for growth in the area of lifeand soft skills for engineering graduates. As far back as 1998 where Duyen Q. Nguyen wrotethat engineering careers remain technical but are shifting towards soft-engineering due to themultidisciplinary nature of the changing workplace11. The two areas he included

Conference Session

Learning From Experts

Collection

2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Gisele Ragusa, Ph.D., University of Southern California

Tagged Divisions

Educational Research and Methods

.   2  Engineering Inquisitiveness: Students’ level and depth of curiousity about engineering processes,how things work, and diverse problem solving approaches within and beyond the discipline.Instrument Design and Testing There are total of forty items on the ECPII with 3-6 items per subscale (described above).This item distribution and scale total is supported by item response theory for designing difficultto observe (soft skill) constructs, as is the case of engivering creativity and innovation. The table (1) below provides sample items for each of the Table 3: Reliability Coefficients subscales. Subscale Cronbach’s A minimum of two

Conference Session

Preparing Engineering Students for Their Professional Practice

Collection

2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access

Authors

Caroline Bolton, Bucknell University; Elif Miskioğlu, Bucknell University; Kaela M. Martin, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University; Caitlyn Aaron; Adam R. Carberry, Arizona State University

Tagged Topics

Diversity

Tagged Divisions

Educational Research and Methods

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

Conference Session

ERM Technical Session 4: Professional Development in Undergraduate Programs

Collection

2019 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Samantha Lee Russell, Grand Canyon University; Maria Zafonte, Grand Canyon University

Tagged Divisions

Educational Research and Methods

they entered anengineering program. A large gender gap was found, particularly in females’ initial attitudes thatreflected lower confidence in their knowledge and abilities that would help them in the field.Recently, there has been a greater acknowledgment that many engineering soft skills, such asleadership and managerial functions, have been learned on the job in the past, but should insteadby an explicit part of the engineering curriculum due to their importance [4].Often students do not fully recognize the skills that they need to be successful engineers. Part ofthe reason for this is that engineers mostly work behind the scenes and do not generally interfacewith the public, thereby creating some mystery about what the work of an engineer

Conference Session

Works in Progress: Curricula and Pathways

Collection

2016 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Bingbing Li, California State University - Northridge; Robert G. Ryan, California State University - Northridge; Nancy Warter-Perez, California State University - Los Angeles; Yong Gan, Cal Poly Pomona; Hadil Mustafa, California State University - Chico; Helen Cox, Institute for Sustainability, California State University - Northridge; Li Ding, California State University - Northridge

Tagged Divisions

Educational Research and Methods

: Implementation of ProjectAbstractThe objectives of our educational research are as follows: 1) Faculty from engineering andfaculty from the social sciences and humanities shall develop strong working relationships andtogether implement and evaluate strategies for working across disciplines. 2) Students ofengineering and their counterparts in the liberal arts and humanities shall engage in peer-to-peerlearning and work together to solve problems. 3) Liberal arts and humanities content will bebetter integrated into the engineering curriculum. 4) Engineering students will understand thevalue and relevance of their General Education. 5) The engineering programs will be betterpositioned to assess their performances on the “soft skills” ABET outcomes (above

Conference Session

ERM Technical Session 18: Student Learning and Problem Solving

Collection

2019 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Anthony Ferrar, Temple University; Pete Watkins, Temple University

Tagged Divisions

Educational Research and Methods

successfulstudent leaving this course will develop a working Android, iOS, or Web-based App.” Studentslearned ten key programming skills including Variables, Data Types, Console I/O, Functions,Debugging, Operators, Conditional Code, Flow Control, Loops, Objects. In addition, studentsemployed integrated development environments for their final projects. Students were given achoice between these three platforms based on interest and resource availability (for example,developing for iOS requires access to an Apple computer).The third learning objective focused on developing the soft skills required to flourish asengineers: “A successful student leaving this course will create a personal learning network.”Students learned to work effectively in teams

Conference Session

Experiences of Underrepresented Students in Engineering

Collection

2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access

Authors

Manuel Jimenez, University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez Campus; Luisa Guillemard, University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez Campus; Sonia M. Bartolomei-Suarez, University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez Campus; Oscar Marcelo Suarez, University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez Campus; Aidsa I. Santiago-Roman, University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez Campus; Nayda G. Santiago, University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez Campus; Carla López del Puerto, University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez Campus; Pedro O. Quintero, University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez Campus; Nelson Cardona-Martínez, University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez Campus

Tagged Topics

Diversity

Tagged Divisions

Educational Research and Methods

soft skills for engineering research and practice? Metrics such asretention, persistence, and self-efficacy beliefs, among others will be measured longitudinallyusing institutional statistics, performance reports, self-report surveys, and validated instrumentssuch as that developed by Lent for self-efficacy [1].The L-CAS ComponentsThe L-CAS model includes four major components: Background Experiences, Belonging,Formation, and Growth. Each component includes interventions designed after successfulpractices cited in the literature and credited to impact self-efficacy beliefs, persistence, andacademic success.The background experiences component takes into consideration socio-demographic and familyvariables identified to affect student’s self

Conference Session

Student Learning, Problem Solving, & Critical Thinking 3

Collection

2014 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Eric L. Wang, University of Nevada, Reno; Ann-Marie Vollstedt, University of Nevada, Reno

Tagged Divisions

Educational Research and Methods

students (as measured by their individual grades). This assumption isbased on the fact that the group work in most classes requires that the students display a masteryof the skills learned from the assignments completed as an individual.While it is true that effective group work also requires many “soft skills” (e.g. teamwork andcommunication), a mastery of the “hard skills” is a necessary condition to be an effectiveteammate. Other studies found a relatively strong correlation between peer evaluations andindividual test scores5,14, which supports this notion.For obvious reasons it is difficult to create teams in a first-year, first-semester course withheterogeneous distributions of GPAs as is often recommended1,5,15. Thus, we expected to

Conference Session

Model Eliciting Activities

Collection

2012 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Mary E. Besterfield-Sacre, University of Pittsburgh; Brian P. Self, California Polytechnic State University; Larry J. Shuman, University of Pittsburgh; John Anthony Christ, U.S. Air Force Academy; Ronald L. Miller, Colorado School of Mines; Tamara J. Moore, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities

Tagged Divisions

Educational Research and Methods

,students were forced to confront and repair certain misconceptions acquired at earlier stages oftheir education, to utilize laboratory experiments to gather additional data, and to recognize andthen resolve ethical issues.Here we introduce several issues when implementing MEAs in upper division level classes byproviding two case studies. These issues are circulated around the theme of engineering learningsystems, and in particular to the professional or “soft” skills. Specifically, the following insightsare provided across two MEAs from two different disciplines and engineering schools: 1. The instructional culture challenges involving MEAs implementation in the classroom; 2. How faculty’s personal epistemology for teaching

Conference Session

Learning From Experts

Collection

2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Indira Nair, Carnegie Mellon University; Eden Fisher, Carnegie Mellon University; Mustafa A. Biviji, Carnegie Mellon University

Tagged Divisions

Educational Research and Methods

:- To learn to identify needs, predict trends, and recognize novel technical opportunities; “spot surprises”- To experience exploring possibilities and delivering specific innovations : “immersing them, giving them a real life experience”; “maintaining a high level of interest and excitement”; “we need more ‘do whatever it takes’”- To learn and practice hard and soft skills and understand underlying principles: “in my lab, first you are going to be learning technique. You have to be able to generate data in a reproducible way, then you need to understand and be able to interpret data and only then can you think of being innovative”; “one of the capabilities that really benefits students tremendously is breadth of

Conference Session

Works in Progress: Curricula and Pathways

Collection

2016 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Alma H. Rosales, Colorado State University; Andrea M. Leland, Colorado State University; Olivera Notaros, Colorado State University, ECE Department; Richard F. Toftness, IEEE High Plains Section; Thomas J. Siller, Colorado State University; Michael A. De Miranda Ph.D., Colorado State University; Alistair Cook, Colorado State University; Melissa D. Reese, Colorado State University; Zinta S. Byrne, Colorado State University; James Warren Weston, Colorado State University; Anthony A. Maciejewski, Colorado State University

Tagged Divisions

Educational Research and Methods

Engineering has worked for years to continuouslyimprove its approach to professional formation, relying heavily on input from constituentsranging from alumni and corporate partners to faculty and current students. The most influentialstakeholder group has been the department’s Industrial Advisory Board (IAB), and for the pastdecade the IAB has driven a number of initiatives designed to teach and build capacities forprofessional skills, often called “soft skills.” As shown in Table 2, the IAB’s recommendationshave been delivered in silos, mostly via the senior design capstone experience. ECE 202 CircuitTheory Applications – which now includes a project design component in the sophomore year –has served as the vital lower-level course for introducing

Conference Session

ERM Technical Session 14: Thinking about the Engineering Curriculum

Collection

2019 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Joshua Earnest, National Institute of Technical Teachers' Training and Research (NITTTR), Bhopal, India; shashi kant Gupta, National Institute of Technical Teachers' Training and Research, Bhopal, India; Susan Sunny Mathew, National Institute of Technical Teachers' Training and Research, Bhopal, India; Sthuthi Rachel Joshua, Ramrao Adik Institute of Technology

Tagged Divisions

Educational Research and Methods

the last semester.However, a few universities may have an additional course as a ‘minor project’ in the lastbut one semester, which is rare. Due to above reasons, the employability levels of theengineering graduates drastically deteriorated over the past years. To address this problem,the micro–project was introduced in every course, from the first to the last semester in this‘Competency–Focused OBC’. As the students move to higher semesters undertaking thedifferent types of micro–projects, some of the social skills and attitudes (see section 3.1)which are ‘embedded’ in the micro–projects also get developed. This is due to the‘repeatability’ factor which is the key to any skill development. The ‘soft skills’ are alsoacutely required by the

Conference Session

New Learning Paradigms II

Collection

2009 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Gisele Ragusa, University of Southern California

Tagged Divisions

Educational Research and Methods

and dispositions may be more difficult for students to understand. Italso may be more difficult to accurately measure this particular construct. Accordingly, thesetwo reasons provide rationale for each of the respective results.Discussion and Future WorkThis paper presents research on the pilot results of the newly designed global preparednessindex. Results of this pilot are preliminary as the population sample size is rather small (N=147).The index provides us with insight as to the “soft skill” areas that me must provide training andeducation for engineering candidates if we want our engineering students to be fully prepared towork in global societies. Post pilot, a full, large-scale study should be conducted with the unitwith sample sizes

Conference Session

ERM Technical Session 14: Thinking about the Engineering Curriculum

Collection

2019 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Lena B. Gumaelius, KTH Royal Institute of Technology; Anette Kolmos, Aalborg University

Tagged Topics

Diversity

Tagged Divisions

Educational Research and Methods

graduates for Industry”, 2010. Available: www.heacademy.ac.uk/system/files/graduates-for-industry-loughborough.pdf[8] R. Graham, “The global state of the art in engineering education” 2018. Available: https://jwel.mit.edu/assets/document/global-state-art-engineering-education[9] S.G. Walesh, “More Coaching—Less Osmosis: Teaching Soft Skills to Hard Scientists”, Journal of Management in Engineering, Vol.13, Issue 4, 1997.[10] D.J. Snowden & M.E. Boone, “A Leader’s Framework for Decision Making”, Harvard Business Review, 69-76. 2007.[11] R. Hadgraft & A. Kolmos, “Emerging learning environments in engineering education”, European Journal of Engineering Education, In progress, 2019.[12] A. Rosén, A-K. Högfeldt

Conference Session

Undergraduate Students' Professional Skills and Reflection

Collection

2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access

Authors

Gibrán Sayeg-Sánchez, Tecnologico de Monterrey; E. G. Avilés-Rabanales, Tecnologico de Monterrey; Miguel X. Rodríguez-Paz, Tecnologico de Monterrey

Tagged Divisions

Educational Research and Methods

. • Values and attitudes: Soft skills required for excelling in student’s academic and professional activities.The purpose of this study is to generate better content delivery strategies for developing student’scompetences. We focus in the third of the previous dimensions: values and attitudes. Within thisdimension, Tecnologico de Monterrey considers teamwork and systemic reasoning as keyelements to be developed by students by incorporating technology to enhance collaboration andproblem solving. This paper focuses on analyzing two key measurements: student’s perceptionof teamwork, and development of systemic reasoning.Young students often consider teamwork as splitting activities among team members, instead ofcontributing to generate synergy

Conference Session

Undergraduate Students' Professional Skills and Reflection

Collection

2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access

Authors

Virginia Charter, Oklahoma State University

Tagged Topics

Diversity

Tagged Divisions

Educational Research and Methods

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

Conference Session

Student Learning

Collection

2010 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Dianne Raubenheimer, North Carolina State University; Eric Wiebe, North Carolina State University; Chia-Lin Ho, North Carolina State University

Tagged Divisions

Educational Research and Methods

) technology skills Problem solving skills (critical Systems knowledge Soft skills (global thinking) issues) Communication skills Self motivated innovation Accountability Knowledge of a programming Understanding business Data exploration language needs (value proposition) Database management skills Data reportingIn parallel with the industry panel work was a comprehensive literature review pertaining tocomputer competency, proficiency, and fluency at the university level. The results of theliterature review revealed broad and inconsistent interpretations of the terms competency,proficiency, and fluency, with very

Conference Session

Professional Skills and the Workplace

Collection

2008 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Ashley Ater Kranov, Center for Teaching, Learning & Technology; Robert Olsen, Washington State University; Carl Hauser, Washington State University; Laura Girardeau, Washington State University

Tagged Divisions

Educational Research and Methods

, intercultural team interactions thatcharacterize engineering careers in the 21st century. While there have been many program-levelefforts across the nation to develop these “soft” skills, such as capstone projects that incorporatestudy abroad and service learning, no direct method of measuring all six skills simultaneouslyexists in the literature. This project proposes an innovative and direct method of developing andassessing ABET professional skills simultaneously that can be used at the course-level forassessing student performance and at the program-level for assessing efficacy of the curricula.In 2007, the Center for Teaching, Learning and Technology (CTLT) at Washington StateUniversity (WSU) collaborated with the College of Engineering and

Conference Session

ERM Poster Session

Collection

2009 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Dan Budny, University of Pittsburgh; Laura Lund, University of Pittsburgh

Tagged Divisions

Educational Research and Methods

were introduced to the studentsas part of the curriculum which provided them with a framework for attacking each of the Page 14.1327.3specific projects. The more beneficial elements of the curriculum, however, were the aspects ofteam development and performance, communication both written and verbal, the procedures fordocumentation using a journal notebook, and reflection on the experiences of each student withtheir project. In other words, the value of the course is that the students learned both in theclassroom and through experience the “soft skills” necessary to function effectively as engineersupon completion of their degree

Conference Session

Mentoring Practices and Project Teams

Collection

2018 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Suzette R. Burckhard, South Dakota State University; Joanita M. Kant, South Dakota State University; Francis Arpan; Ross Peder Abraham, South Dakota State University; Gregory J. Michna, South Dakota State University

Tagged Divisions

Educational Research and Methods

respondents and52 percent for the 2015-16 respondents). Some, however, reported negative impacts on theirachievements because of their work: 10 percent (2014-15) and 19 percent (2015-16), and theremainder reported no effect. Thus, while part-time employment reportedly had beneficialresults for many scholarship recipients, such decisions need to be made on a case-by-casebasis, taking balance into account as recommended by the College Board [22].5. Educational enhancement activities The purpose of the educational enhancement activities was to encourage integrationinto peer study groups, to promote socialization and soft skills, to help the participant to adaptto the university community and the surrounding community, and to promote good

Conference Session

Maker Communities and Authentic Problem Solving

Collection

2018 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Steven Weiner, Arizona State University, Polytechnic campus; Micah Lande, Arizona State University; Shawn S. Jordan, Arizona State University, Polytechnic campus

Tagged Divisions

Educational Research and Methods

determinespecific changes in either technical knowledge or the development of soft skills, but theseoutcomes were alluded to frequently.Makerspaces: Engineering Labs Run for Students vs. Community Hubs Run by StudentsAs noted above, university or academic Makerspaces were a prominent area of focus forEngineering Education researchers. Many articles related to these spaces were excluded based ontheir focus on operation or technical capacities. Several studies describe the teaching oftraditional engineering content—especially engineering design—but with a greater emphasis oncollaboration and entrepreneurship [31]–[33].Other articles provide evidence that Makerspaces were being conceived of as places that allowfor different kinds of knowledge production and

Conference Session

Postgraduate Pathways and Experiences

Collection

2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access

Authors

Jacob Allen Cress, University of Dayton; Patrick W. Thomas, University of Dayton

Tagged Divisions

Educational Research and Methods

communication activities informed by industryco-curricular partners. Central to contemporary pedagogical approaches such as problem-basedlearning and entrepreneurially minded learning is an aim to engage students in authenticexperiences which integrate technical knowledge with workplace skills connected toprofessionalism, communication, collaboration, and leadership. This aim, however, is oftendifficult to incorporate into the design of engineering curricula, which frequently separatetechnical learning from “soft skills” coursework in interpersonal, professional and technicalcommunication. Recognizing this persistent divide, this paper reports on a descriptive case study[8], [9] employing a backwards design approach to integrate professional