Fostering non-technical skills for future engineers: Labour reality in the graphic expression subject

Abstract

21st century engineers have to confront global society’s competitiveness, so technical and technological competences have to be enriched with critical thinking, problem solving, collaboration, communication and creativity skills. To this end, teaching methodologies like Project-Based Learning (PBL) together with cooperative work, to cover the educational needs of future engineering graduates, should be promoted in class. This paper presents the SimABP project, an action where we simulate a work experience in the CAD subject presenting a real challenge to the students, tightly linking academy to real labour reality. In addition, we also define specific rubrics for evaluating the competences and we show the most significant results obtained. Our action has increased the satisfaction and motivation of the students, and the marks obtained in technical skills have been higher.