Improving Teamwork Skills of the Students by Extra Curricular Activities

Abstract

Teamwork skills become increasingly a pre-requisite for employment success. All employers want to recruit graduates who are able to cooperate, share ideas and knowledge, solve problems, quickly adapt to new situation and work in teams. Romanian educational system is mainly based on the individual study, but it has to adapt to this request. The paper presents two different extra curricular activities that were organized in University POLITEHNICA of Bucharest, Faculty of Power Engineering, in order to develop these skills on the students. The students had to work together two weeks to develop a project, but in one of them they worked without having to physically be together at all times, by using the internet as the main communication method. Both events involved students or young graduates from different countries. The Romanian students never had an experience like these before, they were very enthusiastic and they really appreciated the skills and knowledge gained in these events.