Cultivating communications skills as career preparation through multiple project experiences

Abstract

Communication skills remain in high demand among employers. PBL provides multiple opportunities for students to practice communication. Yet there is little exploration of PBL environments’ potential for aiding student communications development. We used quasi-experimental methods to examine whether the communication skills gained during PBL increased with multiple high-quality projects and the extent to which those communication skills contributed to career preparation. We surveyed 420 alumni from Worcester Polytechnic Institute and conducted one way analyses of variance and hierarchical multiple linear regression. Alumni attribute significant improvement in their communication skills to their experiences with project-based learning, which increased significantly with multiple high-quality project experiences. Gains in communication skills was a significant predictor of how prepared alumni report being for their careers, even after controlling for growth in self-efficacy and the specific influence of capstone project experiences. This study is one of the first to look at the return on investment to students’ learning of having multiple project experiences.