No abstract

No abstract

Working in groups and managing projects are important professional skills for engineers, and there is a growing demand to teach and assess such skills. But what should be taught and when? Tuckman's famous "stages of development of performing groups" provides a framework for understanding the types of challenges which groups face. Yet, as with any abstract model, it will not be transferred into students' practice if they do not see it as relevant to their lived experiences.In 2014, a new course exploring the nexus of social and engineering issues in relation to the global challenges facing humanity was added to the obligatory program for all first year engineering students. Among the many noble goals of this course, in addition to gaining a more nuanced view of the global challenges from both an engineering and social science perspective, are the development of transversal skills such as team work, communication, presentation, library research and ethical engagement.The taught material about team work was presented online, allowing for the use learning analytics on students' online responses to assess how well the "stages of group formation" literature matched students' experiences. It also allowed us to consider how students' perceptions of the challenges they will face differed from challenges they actually did face, as well as the implications of this for how they should be taught about group processes.

The common first year of health studies (PACES) was implemented in September 2010 in France. First-year classes are quite large. There is also a significant amount of information to memorize and a selective highly competitive final exam. In this special context, we implemented learning approaches adopted by students and studied their impact on academic achievement. Material and methods: A French translation of John Biggs' R-SPQ-2F questionnaire was administered to PACES students before the mid-term exams in December 2011. Specific learning approaches were determined following an exploratory factor analysis and a selection of relevant items in the context. A binomial regression model was used to assess the association between approaches and high grades at mid-term exams. Results: Overall 1.977 students were included in the analysis. Students with greater chances of success were the ones who i) were interested in their studies (relative risk (RR) of success = 1.5) and ii) focused exclusively on course material (surface approach, RR = 1.4). Students who learned by heart (surface approach) were 1.6 times more at risk to fail than the others. Conclusion: This very selective and stressful exam benefits students who adopt strong surface approaches in order to succeed rather than develop in-depth approaches involving thorough training.

Professional engineering work occurs in dynamic, complex contexts that require engineers to leverage various skills beyond their technical competencies to work productively with different stakeholders. Problem-solving is not merely a technical endeavor; educators and practitioners have long realized the synergistic connection between technical proficiency and complex personal and interpersonal competencies, such as critical thinking and communication skills. Since the 1990s, the topic of transversal or professional skills has been a common thread in engineering education literature. Engineering accreditation bodies such as Accreditation Board for Engineering Technology (ABET) and Commission des titres d’ingénieur (CTI), and engineering curriculum models such as the conceive-designimplement- operate (CDIO) have highlighted the importance of various transversal skills in professional engineering work. Today, there is a general agreement among engineering educators and scholars about the value and benefits of transversal skills. What is less clear is which specific skills should be considered transversal and how those skills can be categorized and defined. Efforts in settling these issues ultimately help engineering programs to have a clearer picture of which skills are (and are not) well integrated and assessed in their curricula. This concept paper discusses a framework for categorizing transversal skills. We build on the relevant literature and the ongoing educational practices in prioritizing transversal skills at the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) to bring visibility to essential graduate skills and attributes, including those that are often underemphasized.