A framework to enhance students’ soft skills within the context of international engineering project collaboration

Abstract

Engineers who possess the so-called soft skill competencies are highly valued in today’s society. Soft skills include, for example, the ability to communicate well, to negotiate, and to organize an entire project in a contemporary engineering industry. Soft skills go as far as interdisciplinary and intercultural collaboration. Hence, universities must offer an environment where engineering students develop these soft skills competencies within the scope of, e.g., international project collaboration, with possibilities for intercultural and interdisciplinary contacts. Nevertheless, the reality of organizing an international collaborative project is very challenging. The purpose of this paper is to provide a framework for organizing international engineering project collaboration to enhance students’ soft skills. As an example of applying the framework, an innovation project that could be executed by 10 students from different European universities with different cultural backgrounds will be showcased. Their project team is asked to develop a technical invention which could be a patentable idea, meaning it could potentially develop itself towards an interesting innovation. In such an international project, soft skill competencies are key for successful collaboration. The research question which will guide this paper is: What is a suitable framework for organising an international engineering project collaboration among universities to enhance the soft skills of their engineering students? The answer is the provided 7-step framework for developing such an international engineering project collaboration.