A student-centered collaborative learning environment for developing communication skills in engineering education

Communication skills development is one of the main goals of engineering education. We propose an integrated student-centered collaborative learning environment for developing communication skills, using project-based learning methods and peer assessment. In our learning environment, projects are assigned to small groups of students under teacher supervision, documented in a wiki-editing tool and presented during a public poster session. By combining wiki entries and poster presentations, we intend to facilitate students (1) to gain access to the project of their peers and share their results, (2) to analyze and comment critically the project of their peers and provide them with feedback, and (3) to enhance their writing and oral skills. Previous experiences encourage us to promote this integrated learning environment. Wiki environments allowed students to improve the quality of their projects and to develop a critical attitude towards their projects and the projects of their peers. The poster session was found to be more dynamic than traditional oral presentations. Students got engaged in a more open and critical manner with the project of their peers, and students presenting their project had the chance to improve the quality of their presentation on the fly, by presenting their work several times in the duration of the session. In future courses, we will implement a learning environment that combines both wiki-based and poster session approaches. We expect that the implementation of both approaches will help to develop the communication skills of engineering students.