Abstract
Leadership development has become an import aspect of the UAE’s educational system. In recent years, UAE leaders have focused on the reform of higher education assessment, curriculum and administration with a view to encouraging Emirati students to contribute to the nation’s growth as national human capital, through leadership roles where they will be guided and educated driving the needs of the knowledge economy. In many courses, students are more knowledge recipients than producers; they are considered cognitively active whilst physically inactive where learning is considered a passive process. BUSS301, a third-year undergraduate course taught to engineering students has undergone major revisions influenced by student evaluations on application, relevance and assessment. The earlier syllabus entitled Corporate Leadership and Human Resource Management (more theoretical and examination driven) has evolved to a more recent Enquiry Based approach: Teaching and Learning Leadership by Simulation and Theory where students are driving their own learning through inquiry using a project-based learning (PBL) approach.
 
 Keywords: Project-based learning, engineering education, leadership, student-centred learning, constructivism, teambuilding, collaboration
Highlights
Industry and academic research has emphasised the need for engineers to be competent in coupling technical expertise to behavioural and societal issues, to be able to problem solve in multidisciplinary teams and to exhibit high level communication skills (Prescott, El Sakran, Albasha, Aloul & Al-Assaf, 2012)
Students work collaboratively to solve an authentic problem, and thereby they develop both content knowledge and graduate attributes such as communication skills and problem solving (Bloxham & West, 2004; Dyball, Brown & Keen, 2007). They experience first-hand the positives and negatives of teamwork, the exposure to the viewpoints of others promoting reflection and discussion, observe group dynamics, develop interpersonal and communication skills. They experience the negatives, interpersonal conflict amongst team members, personality clashes, unequal work-load distribution, incomplete tasks and the inequity of the process knowing that an overall mark will be given when project work load was unevenly distributed as was the quality (Spalding, Ferguson, Garrigan & Stewart, 1999; Walker, 2001)
When asked about how useful the learning is they do in relation to the job and how practical it is compared with university, 60% said their learning was more effective in the work environment and 70% reported that they are more active learners than they were in university
Summary
Industry and academic research has emphasised the need for engineers to be competent in coupling technical expertise to behavioural and societal issues, to be able to problem solve in multidisciplinary teams and to exhibit high level communication skills (Prescott, El Sakran, Albasha, Aloul & Al-Assaf, 2012). Students work collaboratively to solve an authentic problem, and thereby they develop both content knowledge and graduate attributes such as communication skills and problem solving (Bloxham & West, 2004; Dyball, Brown & Keen, 2007). They experience first-hand the positives and negatives of teamwork, the exposure to the viewpoints of others promoting reflection and discussion, observe group dynamics, develop interpersonal and communication skills. The project is guided by an inquiry question that drives the research and allows
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