Article Gold Open Access 2021

Teaching Soft Skills in Engineering Education: An European Perspective

IEEE Access
Journal · Vol. 9 · pp. 29222-29242
Abstract

Higher Education engineering students need to be prepared to address sustainable solutions to the complex problems faced in this century. They should become proficient problem solvers, able to work in multidisciplinary teams, ready to adapt to new technologies, and able to acquire new knowledge and skills when needed. Usually known as soft skills, these competences play a key role in Engineering and have being taught in the last two decades, to a greater or lesser extent, using different methodologies and tools. This study reviews the promotion and teaching of soft skills in Higher Education across 5 European countries: Greece, Estonia, Denmark, Portugal and Spain. It provides an overview of best practices on these countries, focusing also on technological solutions to actually enable the development of soft skills. The purpose of this research is to shed some light about how soft skills are being taught presently and the difficulties involved in that process. © 2013 IEEE.

Keywords

Author Keywords

employability soft skills best practices higher engineering education

Index Keywords

higher education Best practices Sustainable solution European Countries Complex problems Multi-disciplinary teams Problem solvers Technological solution
Author Affiliations
AtlanTTic, Spain, Vigo, Galicia, Spain
Department of Computer Engineering, University of Thessaly, Volos, Thessaly, Greece
Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto, Porto, Porto, Portugal
School of Digital Technologies, Tallinn University, Tallinn, Harjumaa, Estonia
School of Natural Sciences and Health, Institute of Ecology, Tallinn, Tallinn, Harjumaa, Estonia
Center for Communication, Media and Information Technologies, Aalborg University, Aalborg, Nordjylland, Denmark
Funding & Acknowledgements
Grant: 2019-1-EL01-KA203-062952
This work was supported by the Re-engineering Higher Education through Active Learning for Growth (HERA) project funded by the ErasmusC program under Project 2019-1-EL01-KA203-062952.
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