A Strategy for the Development of Lifelong Learning and Personal Skills throughout an Undergraduate Engineering Programme

For many years engineering programmes have placed a stronger emphasis on the development of technical knowledge, understanding and skills at the expense of personal skills such as initiative, creativity, communication, teamwork and lifelong self-directed learning. Recent changes in accreditation criteria call for greater competences in these skills to be achieved in the undergraduate programme. An argument is presented that this requires a change from the traditional approach to engineering education to a group-based project driven one as this is compatible with concurrent development of both technical and non-technical learning outcomes. Just as a clear path of progression exists from the fundamentals of science in stage one to the advanced engineering content in the final year so too should personal skills be developed in a progressive structured way. This paper presents a strategy that is currently being developed and implemented in the School of Electrical Engineering Systems in the Dublin Institute of Technology in a four year Bachelor of Engineering programme. In the group-based project-driven approach students practice communication and team work skills not in isolation to but integrated with the programme´s technical content. The early stages of the programme focus on strongly developing the group learning process and introducing students to a reflective practice so they can observe and improve performance. Tutor observation fades in later years as students become more adept at managing group work and self-directed learning. This strategy is designed to progressively change a dependent freshman student into an independent graduate who is prepared for the challenges ahead.