The role of education on the acquisition of 21st century soft skills by Engineering students

Abstract

The globalization and the high-speed development of the digital era, the mixed of technological, economic and societal cultures and the wide-range of the socio-economic world, boost deep transformations daily on every human being. In particular, students need to acquire personal and professional skills to be successful. Enterprises are looking for individual’s knowledge but also for individual’s contribution to the whole, to the culture of the organization, and the self-perspective an individual brings to the company. These issues may induce a great impact in the teaching process. Single-based knowledge, focused on compartmental subjects did not work in the past, currently fails and probably will not meet future needs. Teaching must be thought continuously as a system of overlapping and interrelated ideas and scientific areas, rather than isolated and different fields of knowledge. In this sense, students need professors with ‘personal and professional qualities assuming the students’ independence in decision-making, the ability to act in difficult situations and the ability for individual study’ [19]. The implementation of new teaching methodologies, namely active-learning (AL) [3], [5], [13], in engineering courses may help students develop soft skills, viz. self-motivation to learn, cognitive flexibility, leadership, ability to work under pressure and time management, negotiation and conflict resolution [8], [15], [11]. In this paper, we will discuss the students’ perceptions on how the implementation of AL techniques in Math courses in Engineering Bachelor Degrees at the School of Engineering of the Polytechnic of Porto, promote the development of the soft skills, needed in their personal and future professional lives.