Promoting Students' Soft Skills in a Telecommunication Engineering Course with an Elevator Pitch Activity

Abstract

An elevator pitch is a short summary used to quickly and simply define a process, product, service, organization, or event and its value proposition. The name comes from the idea that it should be possible to deliver the summary within the time span of an elevator ride, so anywhere between 30 seconds and 2 minutes, which means the key points need to get across quickly. In this particular educational context, technical students have been encouraged to defend, under the typical rules of the elevator pitch, the knowledge acquired during the semester in a specific subject. This contribution focuses on the classroom experience and how the transversality of the activity can help students to strive and think in a different way than they are used to in the classroom of a technical caree