IMPROVING GRADUATES’ ATTRIBUTES THROUGH LABORATORY TEAMWORK

Author(s):  
Daniela Ionescu ◽  
Joe Petrolito ◽  
Bandita Mainali ◽  
Haider Al Abadi

In today’s changing global environment engineering graduates are expected to have both technical and soft skills. Accordingly, La Trobe University has incorporated the soft skills of communication, teamwork, interpersonal skills and leadership into its Civil Engineering course. This paper describes the contribution of teamwork to the development of soft skills during laboratory classes in a number of subjects taught at the second, third and fourth years of study. The assessment for the practical component was designed to enhance teamwork and measure the students’ contribution during the laboratory/field sessions. The practical classes and teamwork requirements improved the students’ technical knowledge, and students became more aware of their own strengths and weaknesses. It also enhanced students’ communication skills and promoted the development of interpersonal skills and a responsible attitude.

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 22-29
Author(s):  
I Dewa Gde Satrya ◽  
Thomas Stefanus Kaihatu ◽  
Lexi Pranata

Traveling not only creates fun for tourists. Tourism activities are believed to also improving human resources ability. It is a significant aspect related to human resource capacity that soft skills ownership which can be trained to modern travellers through ecotourism activities. This descriptive qualitative study describes soft skills trained to tourists from among younger generation in ecotourism destinations. Statement of the problem in this research is what is the relevance between ecotourism and soft skill ownership? This study identifies soft skills trained in ecotourism activities that are interpersonal skills characterized by communication skills, like others, have empathy and concern, warm, forgiving, open, adaptive and self-control abilities. The interpersonal skills that are part of this soft skill are believed to be important and will help younger generation to succeed in living their lives.


Author(s):  
Mitashree Tripathy

In this fast transforming business economy caused by globalization, it has become incredibly important that employees keep on upgrading their hard skills and polish their soft skills if they aspire for a career that not only pays them well but also promises better opportunities in career development. Though the importance of soft skills is recognised in everyday life, in maintaining interpersonal relationships, in buildings strategies for success, its implications are mainly found in organisations and workplaces. Soft skills, however, play a significant role in building a career. Today to succeed and survive in the competitive workplace employees are expected to change their attitude, attention, and commitment to work. Besides, they are also expected to develop other abilities like effective communication skills, teamwork, leadership qualities, stress management, emotional intelligence etc. Competition is progressively increasing across workplaces worldwide. The need to be fit, flexible and existing is highly intrinsic. Soft skills thus help deal with challenges as they offer essential factors to influence the success of the employees and the organisations. This paper focuses on discussing the relevance of soft skills in career success, job satisfaction, creating a better work atmosphere and bringing about productivity at the workplace.


2021 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 34-40
Author(s):  
M. Korosteleva ◽  
◽  
A. Muzychenko ◽  
E. Skurko ◽  
◽  
...  

Universal competencies (“soft” skills), which must be developed in a modern specialist along with the professional ones are analyzed in the article. The importance and relevance of developing such skills as communication skills, the ability to work in a team, leadership qualities and others are justified. Practical examples of developing such skills in foreign language classes are presented.


2021 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Narita Binti Noh ◽  
Nurul Izziyantie binti Mat Noor ◽  
Syed Muhammad bin Syed Yahya ◽  
Muhammad Bazli Faliq bin Mohd Puad

Engineering education has become challenging compared to previous decade, the readiness of graduates before entering employement world is vital for the academician. Students are expected to possess all generic skill sets as needed by a qualified engineer including knowledge profile, engineering ability, communication, teamwork, and other relevant skills. In Malaysia, engineering graduates should possess 12 programme outcomes (PO) according to ETAC requirement, throughout the whole curriculum structure in diploma level. However, capstone course in Diploma Civil Engineering in UiTM only measures 3 main programme outcomes which are problem solving and scientific skills, communication skills, and ethics in engineering. The implementation of capstones course is reviewed for 3 consecutive semesters and student attaintment based on grade and programe outcomes is observed. This paper provides the assesment tools that had been mapped to programme outcomes through out 14 week lesson plan for final year students in Diploma Civil Engineering.This study was conducted in UiTM Pasir Gudang to measure the attainment of student’s skill set based on programme outcomes stated in the syllabus. It shows that, a graduate is considered to be good in communication skills and ethics in engineering but average in problem solving skills and scientific skills. Thus, a few recomandations have been made to improve the skills attainment among students at the faculty level.


2020 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 432-451
Author(s):  
Lora H. Warner

The challenge and opportunity for the field of evaluation is to prepare evaluators with sophisticated interpersonal competence alongside technical research skills. This article shows that service-learning, a “real-world” pedagogical model, holds promise as a way to educate students in evaluation while developing their interpersonal skills. While other community-based approaches offer experiential applications of evaluation methods, service-learning adds the important element of reflection to deepen student learning. A course that employed the “client-based” service-learning approach, individual-to-group student assignments, practice with interpersonal skills, and ongoing reflection activities is presented as a pedagogical approach to expand the range of interpersonal skills that can be developed among students. Student surveys showed that the course conveyed many benefits beyond technical knowledge of evaluation: use and awareness of important interpersonal skills, growing insight into their community and its people, growth of professional self-confidence, and kindling an interest in the field of evaluation.


Author(s):  
Elisabeth Rukmini ◽  
Cindy Cindy ◽  
Pricillia Tanoto

Background: Studies showed that SCL improved quality of medical education through knowledge acquisition, class performance, students’ attitude and soft skills. Although research about SCL and its impact has been widely known, overall correlation of SCL to the class performances has not yet been established. Strong correlation between SCL to class performances would serve the purpose of teaching and learning and more importantly would answer the skepticism of institution or faculty members in implementing SCL. In addition, learning through systematic review of others’ studies, how SCL influenced soft skill aspects would be benefited for medical educators. Soft skills such as learning motivation, communication skills, and teamwork may lead educators to the favor of SCL approaches. This review was to find the correlation of student-centered learning to the students’ performances and soft skill aspects in medical education.Method: To find the correlation of the SCL and class performances, we used meta-analysis. We also performed a systematic review to qualitatively find the relationship between SCL and other aspects, such as teamwork, communication skills, and learning motivation. Literatures were filtered from databases of: Proquest, Springerlink, Biomed Central (BMC) open, BMJ open, and Google Scholar. The inclusion criteria were published empirical articles (2000-2013) reported SCL’s effect on class performances or other aspects (learning motivation, teamwork, communication skills). We utilized PRISMA protocol to filter the inclusion articles. By reading abstracts and further snowballing searching, we found 12 articles for the meta-analysis and 33 articles for the systematic review.                                                                 Results: Among 12 articles of the meta-analysis, 9 articles showed positive correlation between SCL and class performances. Three studies reported that SCL had no effect on the class performances. None of the articles reported any negative impact. We utilized the Comprehensive Meta-Analysis software to analyze the data and found r = 0.46 and 95% CI: 0.32 - 0.57. It showed a statistically significant correlation between SCL and class performances. On the systematic review, we found that SCL improved communication skills, team work, and learning motivation.Conclusion: From the meta-analysis we found that SCL improved class performances about 46%. It was showed that SCL methods were superior in improving soft skills such as communication skills, teamwork, and learning motivation.                


Author(s):  
Lenard Mariyanov Adanov ◽  
Andrew Macintyre ◽  
Marina Efthymiou

Pilot training and recruitment is of fundamental importance for the aviation industry. Yet, a number of Commercial Pilot’s License (CPL) applicants trained by Approved Training Organizations (ATOs) fail their airline assessments. To provide some clarity on why this is happening, we conducted in-depth interviews with twelve industry professionals and a detailed documentary analysis was undertaken. We found that the main reasons are: (1) Lack of preparation or technical knowledge; (2) Poor communication skills; and (3) Poor display of teamwork and leadership. The paper suggests that regulation should be implemented for ATO’s to use screening processes on potential students to increase quality or Airline Pilot Standard Multi Crew-Cooperation (APS MCC) system, as an additional training system on top of what is being taught in ATOs. Regulations should further be linked with regular audits in place for smaller airlines to increase the effectiveness of their pilot assessments and recruitment processes in order to increase safety. Areas of further research as also identified.


Author(s):  
Masadliahani Masduki ◽  
Normah Zakaria

Human resources today must be nurtured with the skills needed at the workplace in preparation for future challenges. Many engineering graduates nowadays are facing difficulties in adapting themselves to the workplace. They are highly dependent on academic qualifications and underestimate the need for skilled workers who are not only technically proficient but have high competencies of soft skills, especially communication skills. The ability of graduates to communicate effectively can have a significant impact on their career development. Therefore, technical graduates need to equip themselves with knowledge of their future workplace’s communication needs. The objective of this study is to qualitatively explore the elements of communication skills demanded at the civil engineering workplace. Five participants consisting of experts from academia and industries were involved in semi-structured interviews. Data were hand-transcribed and analysed. Four themes emerged from the data and identified as oral communication, written communication, interpersonal communication, and visual communication. Thirty-four sub-themes appeared from the analysis and have been discussed accordingly.


2021 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 119-140
Author(s):  
Paulina Tetwejer

The article is a presentation of a part of the results of research conducted during work on the dissertation. In the introduction, theoretical references to understanding volunteering from various perspectives were indicated. It also emphasizes the understanding of volunteering as an opportunity to develop professional competences of a volunteer. Consequently, the next part of the article is an argument on the relationship between volunteering and professional competences. The author indicates specific skills, knowledge and attitudes that, according to the literature, can be acquired during volunteering. Subsequently employers’ expectations towards the characteristics of future employees, as well as their attitude to volunteering are described. This part is based on research conducted, among others, by the Warsaw School of Economics. Then, the author presents the results of her own research conducted among employers of social sciences students and their perception of volunteering and the opportunities it creates for the development of competences. The analysis of the research results allows us to believe that volunteers, during their activity, gain mainly practical and industry knowledge. Among the skills indicated were group cooperation, interpersonal skills and effective communication. The attitudes that volunteers acquire thanks to their actions are: resourcefulness, responsibility, sensitivity and empathy. At the end, the results of the author’s research on competences acquired by volunteers were compared with the competences desired by employers and the existing competency gap. The analysis of all answers confirms that communication skills, openness, teamwork and industry knowledge are competences that are desirable in an ideal graduate, who most often has a competency gap in this area. At the same time, these are competences that can be acquired through volunteering. The research results may suggest that people entering the labour market, but also employers, are interested in volunteering as a way to increase their chances on the labour market.


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