largely accomplished. Figure 3: Race/Ethnicity of Post Survey Respondents (N=29) SA Agree Neutral SD Disagree N/ALearned from industry leaders about tech topics 64% 32% 4% 0% 0% 0%Gained technical skills from workshops 36% 32% 12% 0% 12% 8%Gained soft skills from workshops 40% 44% 8% 0% 4% 4%Learned about grad. school paths 36% 32% 4% 0% 4% 24%Learned about job opportunities 48% 36% 4% 0% 4% 8%Networked w/ leaders and peers in field 60% 32% 4
this study have implications forimproving engineering education and future laboratory development.Keywords: Engineering education, undergraduate students, laboratory use,perspectives, attitudesIntroductionThis study delves into the diverse perspectives of engineering students regarding thethree types of laboratories, recognizing the background and significance of laboratoryexperiences in engineering education. In a hands-on lab, both the instructor andstudents operate the machine directly in the laboratory (Ma & Nickerson, 2006).Additionally, hands-on laboratories can provide an engaging session for students todemonstrate their content and soft skills (Yeter et al., 2023). Furthermore, involvingdirect machinery operation within a physical
in soft skills by working in aninterdisciplinary team.AcknowledgementsThis project was supported by USDA NIFA funding, award number 2019-38422-30259. Wewould like to acknowledge Evelyn Martinez and Misael Calderon for the germination graphincluded in this document. We would also like to acknowledge all the previous SUSTAINstudents whose work is photographed in this paper. The external evaluation of the grant programwas conducted by Integrated Learning Innovations, Inc.References[1] Bogoslowski, S., Geng, F., Gao, Z., Rajabzadeh, A.R., Srinivasan, S., “Integrated Thinking -A Cross-Disciplinary Project-Based Engineering Education” in Auer, M.E., Centea, D. (eds)Visions and Concepts for Education 4.0. ICBL 2020. Advances in Intelligent Systems
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
. 97, (4), pp. 433-447, 2008.[2] B. K. Jesiek et al, "Global engineering competency in context: Situations and behaviors,"Online Journal for Global Engineering Education, vol. 8, (1), pp. 1, 2014.[3] E. De Graaff and W. Ravesteijn, "Training complete engineers: global enterprise andengineering education," European Journal of Engineering Education, vol. 26, (4), pp. 419-427,2001.[4] H. W. Rittel and M. M. Webber, "Dilemmas in a general theory of planning," Policy Sci., vol.4, (2), pp. 155-169, 1973.[5] M. T. Hora, R. J. Benbow and B. B. Smolarek, "Re-thinking soft skills and studentemployability: A new paradigm for undergraduate education," Change: The Magazine of HigherLearning, vol. 50, (6), pp. 30-37, 2018.[6] N. C. Kawa et al, "Training
theDEI objectives of the course and reinforces the literature on the benefits of diversity inenhancing creativity and problem-solving in engineering education [15, 16].These themes collectively emphasize the effectiveness of the 'fail-forward learn-fast' mindset incultivating an environment that encourages risk-taking, embraces failure, and leverages diversityfor innovation. The course's approach, as reflected in the thematic analysis, not only facilitatestechnical skill development but also raises critical soft skills such as resilience, adaptability, andcollaborative problem-solving.The DEI-focused survey questions revealed students' perceptions of the course's inclusivity anddiversity efforts: • Inclusive Classroom Environment: High
, T. A. Kummer, and P. D. de Melo Godoy, “Improvements from a flipped classroom may simply be the fruits of active learning,” CBE Life Sciences Education, vol. 14, 2015.[22] Y.-C. Chen, K.-K. Fan, and K.-T. Fang, “Effect of flipped teaching on cognitive load level with mobile devices: The case of a graphic design course,” Sustainability, vol. 13, no. 13, 2021. [Online]. Available: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/13/7092[23] S. McLean, S. M. Attardi, L. Faden, and M. Goldszmidt, “Flipped classrooms and student learning: not just surface gains,” Advances in physiology education, 2016.[24] A. Betti, P. Biderbost, and A. Garc´ıa Domonte, “Can active learning techniques simultaneously develop students’ hard and soft skills
sciencecommunication in the orientation sessions for the first two cohorts and worked with ouruniversity’s Graduate College to revive a half-semester course on this topic. In consultation withthe external advisory board, we also focused the first annual symposium, scheduled for April2020, to focus on communication and soft skill development.Modification with student leadership: The COVID-19 pandemic caused postponement of the firstsymposium to January 2021, conducted in a virtual format. Meanwhile, the second cohort joinedthe first one in Fall 2020 and the learning community moved mostly online (throughout the2020-21 academic year, our university was holding some face-to-face classes and activities,while many remained hybrid or virtual). We instituted working
Values, vol 39, no. 1, pp. 42-72, http://www.jstor.org/stable/43671164[10] V. V. Bracho Perez, A. Nuñez Abreu, A. A. Khan, L. E. Guardia, I. M. Hasbún, and A. C. Strong, “Mechanical Engineering Students’ Perceptions of Design Skills Throughout a Senior Design Course Sequence,” 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access, Virtual Conference, http://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--36523[11] D. B. de Campos, L. M. M. de Resende, and A. B. Fagundes, “The Importance of Soft Skills for the Engineering.”, Creative Education, vol. 11, pp. 1504-1520, 2020, https://doi.org/10.4236/ce.2020.118109[12] J. Saldaña, The Coding Manual Qualitative Researchers (3rd ed.). SAGE Publications Inc., 2016
“soft” skills, which are exactly what Chinese engineering students need, although they areexcellent in technical aspects.Another challenge we may experience is the frequent change of student leaders. For example, theIEEE Student Branch has an election every year. The change of SB chair usually means thechange of the entire leadership team. The librarians might spend considerable time training thestudents and adapting to each other’s style. Then the leader and the team are replaced, and theprocess begins anew. The difference can be even more significant if the team is changing fromthe graduate-composed to the undergraduate-composed. Graduates usually have busier schedulesworking in their labs and publishing papers. But they are generally more
, project-based Lean Six Sigma course that provides students a Page 22.1611.8 fundamental understanding of the DMAIC process using both quantitative and qualitative tools. Additionally, provide students the opportunity to learn appropriate facilitation (soft) skills necessary to lead productive Six Sigma projects.With the project scope in place, the researcher moved to the second phase of the DMADVprocess, the Measure phase.MeasureDuring this phase, the goal is to measure and quantify the customers’ needs and expectations.More specifically, in this study, the author set out to identify the tools, both quantitative andqualitative
. Giventhat most of our engineering students typically show resistance to learning such “soft skills” aswritten and oral communication, these survey results are encouraging in that they indicate thatmany students have been to at least some degree won over.When asked to write comments, many students provided insightful suggestions. Several showedtheir appreciation of communicating with fictitious customers with comments such as, “I thoughtthat the customers were fun and creative. It forced us to think outside the box a little, and addressthem like people with potentially little technical background.” Others had a bit more difficultywith the task of writing to a customer rather than faculty: “I guess that I personally didn't write itto the client, so
utilization Minority education Support courses Soft skills (e.g. communication)When asked whether they had taken any actions regarding any of the issues and ideas discussedin the forum, a majority of respondents (11/14) answered yes. One person stated that “[t]heforum increased my desire to enhance my scholarship of engineering teaching and assessment, toimprove the engineering courses that I teach (and perhaps influence other colleagues to do thesame)” while another suggested “the primary overall benefit was the encouragement to look tohow to be more effective in our combined work”.Although the forum evaluation found minimal impact in terms of concrete activity in support ofthe proposed models, the long-term value of
integrated PBL curriculum to address this need. Additionally, the “soft skills” learningthat have been previously presented during the capstone sequence will now be delivered in thePBL curriculum. We have learned that faculty mentors are key role players in achieving successwith the project in terms of meeting the learning outcomes. The faculty member has to develop abalance between meeting the needs of the customer, a completed product, and the experimentallearning that must take place over the course of the project. Finally, student teams who engagethe customer frequently throughout the progression of the project meet the requirements of theproject more frequently. The 2010-2011 capstone year now requires faculty and industry mentorsto meet one
Page 22.279.2something in common, as well as something unique, for REU in different majors. No study wasfound for engineering technology (ET) majors.For ET majors, only a very small percentage of students went on to get graduate degrees. MostET graduates pursue careers in engineering and technology related industries. Research skillsand soft skills such as teamwork and communication are very important for ET graduates.As Hunter pointed out8, the design of student research projects is critically important to success.This is particularly the case for ET programs. Typically, ET students have strong hands-oncapability, but they are not motivated to conduct theoretical analysis. For ET students in a twoyear program, most of them will be hired as
leadership may be particularlyeffective because of it conscious and deliberate application of “soft skills”. The effects ofthis observation will unfold during the course of this case study. Another observation of the coalition pyramid is that it is bereft of large private donors.The pyramid is led and motivated by people with a vested interest in local engineeringeducation who lack the fiduciary flexibility of private parties. It was observed in referencefour that local philanthropists suffer from donor fatigue. The need, and ability of theimplementers, to attract private donors will be captured as part of the case study. Evidence of the influence of the grass-roots partners in the local educational communityis noticeable. The high school
groups, the industry that employs individualswith a college degree has also brought many criticisms and claimed that the higher educationenterprise is not educating the engineers they need. Among those were the reports from ABET3,the National Academy of Engineering4 and the National Research Council 5. These reports alsocriticized higher education institutions for their lack of success in instilling leadership abilitiesalong with other skills needed within recent engineering graduates. Some of these concerns fromthe industry focused on “soft skills”, what was called earlier, or “professional skills” ofengineers. Among the professional skills one of the most studied attribute or skill is theengineers’ leadership abilities.Although there has been
result of this, many authors have argued for moreteaching of the “soft skills” in engineering. Studies like this continue to fuel the see-sawbetween highly “scientific” engineering education and highly “social”. Ultimately, theargument comes down to the question of which side of the balance is sacrificed in favour of theother.The “structural” design of most engineering programs in Canada is, in accordance with theCanadian Engineering Accreditation Board guidelines 2, based on separate distinct courses. Eachcourse in a student’s degree program has a weight in “academic units” (AU’s) which roughlycorrespond to faculty contact hours for each course per week semester. Comparing thisaccreditation standard with current educational literature, there is
face-to-face courses.IntroductionChemical Materials Science is typically taught as a 4 lecture per week course. Studentperformance is evaluated via weekly homework and 2-3 exams per quarter. Past offerings of thisand other similar materials science courses have included features such as lab experiments andopen ended materials selection projects done in groups. These group projects typically involvedwritten and/or oral reports in order to improve soft skills and allow promotive interactionbetween the students. Collaborative learning has been a key feature of many courses at our Page 15.321.2university, and has been used extensively in other
of AC vector analysis, transientresponse, and resonant RLC circuits were expanded to allow students to grasp a betterunderstanding of these concepts. However, major changes were made to the laboratorycomponent of this course for which a lab manual was developed with a completely new set ofexperimentations dealing with renewable energy and instrumentation.Since this course is used in the assessment process for ABET accreditation, the learningoutcomes were also expanded to include soft skills such as commitment to quality, timeless, andcontinuous improvement. These new learning objectives and summary of topics are listed inTable 1 and Table 2 respectively
. describes a course to teach softskills applicable to all students but little training on tackling open-ended problems. Rogge andLivesay presents a course to prepare biomedical engineering students using mini-design projects,however no details of the projects are given in the paper. Csavina and Seeney discuss a productdesign course for biomedical engineering students to prepare of open ended constraints bydesigning a Home Lift Position and Rehabilitation chair. Co et. al. write about a pre-capstonecourse for electrical engineers where teams work on various subsystems of an overall electricaldevice. A number of team and soft skills were also reinforced in the course to provide bettermanagement and integration of efforts. The course described in this
environment to develop soft skills needed for engineers. Theyare distributed throughout the two semesters to give the students a line of guidance. Page 15.259.7Two examples of capstone projects will be discussed in the following sections. The methodexplained above is applied to them with some changes based on the nature of the project.Project 1: Mini Baja vehicleThe Society of Mechanical Engineering (SAE) organizes a design competition for off- roadvehicles each year (Mini Baja). Each team is given the same engine, a set of rules for generalvehicle dimensions, and a list of minimum safety requirements. The technical challenge is todesign and build a
at Chapel Hill, we have a small but growing program in Page 15.765.2Biomedical Engineering (graduating 32 students in May 2010). When the faculty first developedthe curriculum, we incorporated a typical two-semester senior design course. However, we soonrealized that the students were entering senior design without the skills needed to be productivein that experience. As a result, we decided to enhance the design component of the curriculum.The design process involves many components, including identifying the need; proposingsolutions; developing prototypes; testing and evaluating prototypes; and building a finisheddevice.10 Other “soft
, learning communities, online discussions, instructional design for online learning, and innovative technology for learning. She can be reached at htn126@psu.edu. Page 15.169.1© American Society for Engineering Education, 2010 An Investigation of First Year Students’ Perceptions of Global AwarenessAbstractMost engineering educators recognize the importance of emphasizing the so-called “soft-skills”in the undergraduate curriculum in order for graduates to be competitive in the global workforce.Of increasing interest for many engineering programs is engaging students in
versus women and E10 men versus women. The bolded numbers represent thehighest confidence for each category that was statistically significant.In spite of the national differences described previously, both populations show similar genderdifferences. The men ranked higher than the women in their analytical skills, their ability toidentify and solve technical problems, and their ability to use engineering techniques and tools.However, women were more confident in understanding the global impact of engineering designand analysis, and also self-rated higher in their communication skills, team skills, and leadershipskills. These patterns highlight the perceived “hard” and “soft” skill sets often attributed to menand women. Engineering
, Developing and Assessing Global Competence in Engineers. European Journal of Engineering Education, 31, 119-131. 7. Beard, D., Schwieger, D., Surendran, K. (2008). Integrating Soft Skills Assessment through University, College, and Programmatic Efforts at an AACSB Accredited Institution. Journal of Information Systems Education, 19, 229. 8. Besterfield-Sacre, M., Shuman, L. J., Wolfe, H., Atman, C. J., McGourty, J., Miller, R. L., Olds, B. M., Rogers, G.M. (2000). Defining the Outcomes: A Framework for EC-2000. IEEE Transactions on Education, 43, 100-10. 9. Gerhart, A., Grunow, M. (2009). Leadership Models and Practices Course: Student Perceptions and Development of Leadership Skills and
throughout BIOEN curriculum, including Capstone Senior Design sequence. Team work integral to core upper-level lab classes, poster Team projects implemented from freshman year throughProfessional "Soft Skills" (team work, communication and written report required for Capstone course. senior year, oral presentation required in addition to poster skills) and written report for Capstone; Capstone now has option for
experienceCurrently, there are a series of core courses in which our integrating experience has beenimplemented with enough detail as to ascertain a reasonable experience as to the effectiveness ofthis new ‘backbone’ process.Benefits: 1. Can cover more and have more face time with instructor. Capstones are usually 20 weeks with minimal student/ instructor time and a great deal of independent/group time. 2. Exposure to several instructors through several courses. 3. Allows greater detail of topics such as the student being responsible for independently designing an experiment, statistically validating the results and presenting their findings. 4. Integrates not only the technology of the courses but also greatly enhances the soft skills. 5. Gives
program outcomes. This provides the possibility of gettingdisciplinary norms on the group summary report that is provided for each course. The secondassessment instrument under consideration for addressing the sustainability issue was a Page 15.1280.12questionnaire survey given to the graduating seniors in the capstone course. Additionalquestions with regard to the soft skills or professional outcomes could be added to this surveywithout increasing the work involved in the data collection process.Summary and lessons learnedThis paper overviews how Engineering Technology faculty at a university in the Midwest (calledMU in the paper) transitioned