Abstract
Good communication skills are of utmost importance in the education of engineering students to promote not only their education, but also to prepare them for the demanding and competitive job market. The purpose of this study was to compare the attitudes towards communication skills after formal instruction between the students of engineering studies in the first and sixth semesters. Data were collected using the Communication Skills Attitude Scale (CSAS) which consisted of 14 items. The target population included 31 students of engineering studies who attended the communication skills course in the first semester, and 31 students of engineering studies who attended the same course just before completion of the undergraduate study programme. The results are in accordance with previous studies suggesting that senior and more mature students have higher positive attitudes compared to students at the beginning of their undergraduate studies. Although both groups had noticeable positive attitudes towards learning communication skills, negative attitudes should also be taken into consideration and attempt should be made to decrease or eliminate them.
Highlights
Today's job market has become significantly competitive and in order to be successful the candidates must have qualities that distinguish them from other candidates with similar qualifications
The positive attitude scale (PAS) included items 1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 14, and 2, 6, 11, 13 related to negative attitudes towards communication skills such as “I don't see the point in studying communication skills“
The results of this study revealed that there were significant differences between the two groups of participants in their positive as well as negative attitudes towards communication skills
Summary
Today's job market has become significantly competitive and in order to be successful the candidates must have qualities that distinguish them from other candidates with similar qualifications. Engineering graduates need communication skills to maintain relevance with the global environment. The importance of soft skills is becoming increasingly recognized by employers who very often complain about the lack of these skills among graduates from tertiary education institutions. In their view, the candidates have sufficient technical knowledge but lack soft skills, communication skills in particular. The candidates have sufficient technical knowledge but lack soft skills, communication skills in particular This requirement was noticed more than 40 years ago when the German Engineering Association recommended that 20% of all courses of the engineering curricula should include soft skills such as the knowledge of foreign languages, cultural awareness, communication skills and rhetoric courses (Ihsen, 2003)
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