Fostering Professional Competencies in Engineering Undergraduates with EPS@ISEP

Benedita Malheiro,Manuel F Silva,Paulo Ferreira,Pedro Guedes

doi:10.3390/educsci9020119

Benedita Malheiro, Manuel F Silva + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci9020119

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Journal: Education Sciences	Publication Date: May 29, 2019
Citations: 16	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: Polytechnic Institute of Porto

Abstract

Engineering education addresses the development of professional competencies in undergraduates. In this context, the core set of professional competencies includes critical thinking and problem solving, effective communication, collaboration and team building, and creativity and innovation—also known as the four Cs—as well as socio-professional ethics and sustainable development—referred in this paper as the two Ss. While the four Cs were identified by the associates of the American Management Association based on the needs of the society, professional associations, and businesses; this paper proposes the two S extension to ensure that future engineers contribute to the well-being of individuals and the preservation of life on Earth. It proposes a tangible framework—the 4C2S—and an application method to analyse the contributions made by engineering capstone programmes to the development of these core competencies in future engineering professionals. The method is applied to an engineering capstone programme—the European Project Semester (EPS) offered by the Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto (ISEP)—and a specific project case—EPS@ISEP Pet Tracker project developed in 2013, constituting, in addition, a road map for the application of the 4C2S framework to engineering capstone programmes. The results show that EPS@ISEP complies with the 4C2S framework.

Highlights

Engineering education aims to prepare professionals to address the challenges of the future
The method looks for signs of professional behaviour and team work, e.g., the ability to meet deadlines, to define agendas, to lead meetings, to solve conflicts, to report and discuss findings, and to together reach a solution to an open-ended problem
European Project Semester (EPS)@Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto (ISEP) develops these skills and follows the trends identified by Hackman et al [22]: relies on technology, selects service-learning and community-based multidisciplinary projects, and incorporates ethical and sustainability principles into the capstone project

Summary

Introduction

Engineering education aims to prepare professionals to address the challenges of the future. Society (while beneficiaries), academia (while educators), and businesses (while employers) must work together to define the set of core competencies of future engineers. From the entrepreneurs’ perspective, the 21st century business requires, beyond the basics of reading, writing, and arithmetics (the three R), skills such as critical thinking and problem solving, effective communication, collaboration and team building, and creativity and innovation (the four Cs) [1]. The AMA defines critical thinking and problem solving (CTPS) as the ability to make decisions, to solve problems, and to take action as appropriate; effective communication (EC) as the ability to synthesise and transmit ideas both in written and oral formats; collaboration and team building (CTB) as the ability to

Methods

Discussion

Conclusion