developing transversal skills: an example of team- working in an under-graduate introductive course...

Developing transversal skills: an example of team-working in an under-graduate introductive course

Andrea Collina

4th ITINERANT SEMINAR: Decision Making and Responsibility

Creativity and enterprising skills in thelearning process


2Presentation overview

- Motivation for developing transversal skills activity in a under-graduate course.

- Structure of the proposed activity.

- Implementation and feed-back.

- Final remarks and considerations: problems and items related to the practical implementation


3Motivation

Surveys carried out on alumni in the several European countries (also within the framework of ECCE project) put in evidence the necessity to improve transversal skills for engineers in general, such as:

• project management• team work• presentation skills• critical thinking • survey capabilities• social and economical competences

Interviews with responsibles for human resources put in evidence the same requirements.

But on the other side it is also feared that a broadening of transversal knowledge may lead to loosing the sounded base of the engineering education, in favor of a highly specialized, but limited, knowledge.


4Motivation

• A significant number of bachelor graduated students in mechanical engineering at Politecnico di Milano directly apply for a job and do not follow the master degree track, if compared to other engineering courses.

• It is therefore worthwhile giving such transversal skills!

• In order to encourage the spreading of transversal skill also at bachelor level, an experimentation for carrying out an activity aimed at developing some of the above mentioned skills has been proposed, conceived and implemented


5Aim ot the activity

As application, an experimental activity of a team-work project has been implemented in the three sections in the second year course of Applied Mechanics at a bachelor level.

It was immediately clear that the high number of potentially involved students would have been posed organisation problems to be tackled.

An activity as close as possible to a open engineering problem has been posed.

The activity is organized according to the European parameter /Dublin and EUR-ACE in particular) as regard to skills that can be obtained by the students. Aim of the activity was to develop in particular the following skills: team work critical thinking project management communication and presentation skills.


6

• The format is a feasibility study, starting from project specifications referred to a technical problem.

• The activity aims at simulating a real working environment, distributing the work according to specific internal functions and roles that have to be organized so as to get a final goal

Technical specification

Working Group

Final presentation of the project

TUTOR

CREMIT

Team working Critical analysisProject managementPresentation skills

Structure of the activity


7

In the first year the activity was supported by CREMIT, (coordinated by Prof. C. Rivoltella, Research Center for Education to Communication Media and Technology of Milan Catholic University), that dealt with:

• general review of the project and its relational structure (members and group interactions)

• suggestion for tutors’ activity

• evaluation of the initiative



8

• The selected topic for the first year was the energy recovery in public transportation

• The main question was: where and when it is economically and technically convenient to apply the energy recovery in a railway vehicle?

• Different scenarios were proposed in which to develop the project: tramway, metro, suburban transportation and regional transportation.

• Extra-curricular knowledge required for the development of the work were kept at minimum



9

• Main flow of the work


Technical and performance specifications

Delivered and gathered

information and methods

Individual working and team working

Intermediate self organised meeting

and external milestones

Final project


10Structure of the activity

Skill (Eurace) Sub-activityteam work • task subdivision (team leader, calculus, gathering of

information, preparation of the presentation and of the report,…)• cooperation among the members for a common goal

critical thinking • motivation for technical choices and internal discussion

project management

• internal organization of the group• capability to meet intermediate deadlines and milestones

presentation skills • technical report• final presentation


11

• Participation was on voluntary basis, each working group was composed of ten students.

• Four groups for each of the three courses were formed, with a total of 120 students involved.

• The members of the group mutually interact each other and also with the tutor, though the responsible for communication or the team leader, for all the matters concerning the development of the work and documentation exchange, through a internally based POLIMI platform.



12

Intermediate meeting were planned according to a specified time table in order to deliver the necessary material, to follow-up the development of the work, to discuss the problems encountered during the work, and to finalize the work for the final goal.

At the end of the working period, a final presentation of the project was done by each working group, in presence of all the other working groups.

Self evaluation, internal between group member and inter-group peer review was implemented, to stimulate self confidence and responsibility.

A final informal diploma was given to students that gained a certain level.



13Some feedback: satisfaction

perceived usefulness of the porposed activiy

1,0

1,5

2,0

2,5

3,0

3,5

4,0

4,5

5,0

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

goups

degr

ee (f

rom

1 to

5)


14Some feedback: effort !

Sustainibility of the activity (1=heavy, 5=sustainible)

1,01,52,0

2,53,03,54,0

4,55,0

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14groups

degr

ee (1

to 5

)


15Some remarks and problematic items

• The activity was developed inside a single course, (loosing of interdisciplinary ?)

• It is necessary to follow the development of the matter during the semester.

• Management of a large number of students (approx. 120 for each of the three sections), how to enlarge to the full population and decreasing the number of group members ?

• Huge work performed by the tutors

• The work is done outside the time table of the course: extra work (mean of 35 hours/students)



The work will go on searching for an optimal balance between quality of the work, aimed at transversal skill development, for all the students of the three-year engineering course.



Thank you for your kind attention

developing transversal skills: an example of team- working in an under-graduate introductive course...

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