Using leadership education practices to enhance freshmen engineering student interviewing skills

Abstract

A key component in the leadership education program for graduating seniors in engineering (at a specific university) is interviewing established leaders. Through the interview, small groups of students prepare for and engage the established leader to explore the leader's characteristics, experiences, and methods of leadership. Surveys have found this a more meaningful learning experience for the students than traditional lecturing by the leader/speaker. Further, development of interviewing skills and improved understanding of the value of asking better questions has also been shown to increase student confidence in their ability to communicate, listen, and reflect. Development of questioning and interview techniques was used to improve communication and engagement in freshmen mechanical engineering students. By having freshmen engage in-class speakers in an interview format compared to traditional lectures, the students actively engaged in questioning demonstrated increased retention of information compared to the group that received the same information via traditional lecture. Through analysis of student surveys, the preliminary conclusion of this work is that by placing the responsibility (and consequences) for learning on the engineering student in limited situations can aid in their development of skills needed to improve their leadership, communication, and engagement skills. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2013.