Principal Investigator: Dr. Faisal Aqlan, Industrial Engineering
Co-principal investigator: Dr. Qi Dunsworth, Center for Teaching Initiatives
Collaborating faculty member: Dr. Mary Khal, Communication
Funded by: Schreyer Institute for Teaching Excellence at Penn State
Project description:
Today’s labor market requires well-educated engineers with a variety of skills to effectively solve problems and improve processes. In addition to advanced technical skills, engineering work also demands effective teamwork and a range of soft skills. Despite such needs in the engineering workforce, academic engineering curricula tend to focus on developing the technical skills of the students, overlooking the development of soft skills such as critical thinking, communication, teamwork collaboration, metacognitive awareness, and creativity. In fall 2017, we integrated the teaching of soft skills into a manufacturing systems course where students learn about manufacturing systems through a series of teamwork-based simulations. Workshops designed to develop metacognitive and teamwork skills were added to the course. Teamwork style and team performance was measured before and after the workshops. The results suggest that the benefit of teaching students soft skills extends beyond soft skill growth to improved team performance. Instructors interested in teaching students soft skills may find more details in the conference paper at the 2018 ASEE Annual Conference.
