Personal and interpersonal skills

A curriculum organized around mutually supporting disciplinary courses with activities interwoven that develop personal and interpersonal skills, and product, process and system building skills. 

Specific, detailed learning outcomes for personal and interpersonal skills and product, process, and system building sldlls, as well as disciplinary knowledge, consistent with program goals and validated by program stakeholders... 

No elements in the CDIO approach are prescriptive. We have developed resources to help engineering programs resolve the essential conflict in engineering education, that is, time and resources for learning both the disciphnary fundamentals and personal and interpersonal skills, and product, process, and system building skills. These resources are intended to facilitate the rapid adaptation and implementation of the CDIO approach into university programs. 

UK-SPEC is not self-contained, that is, it delegates responsibility for important personal and interpersonal skills to the Qualifications and Curriculum Development Agency, which provides guidance on a limited set of skills that are not specifically those required by engineering graduates. 

In engineering education, personal and interpersonal skills, such as teamwork and communication, are often called generic skills. They are generic in the sense that lawyers, doctors, and other professionals need to communicate and work in teams. However, the personal and interpersonal skills, and product, process, and system building skills used by engineers are practiced in specific technical contexts. For example, communication proficiency in a technical field depends on being able to apply disciplinary concepts, examine problems at different levels of abstraction, make connections, and explain technical issues for different audiences. 

Learning outcomes—what students will know and be able to do as a result of the design-implement experience— need to distinguish success in acquiring personal and interpersonal skills, and product, process, and system building skills, from successful performance of the product, process, or system that is designed. It is possible to have substantial learning benefits even if the project is not a complete success in terms of a functional product. 

Facilitate student learning of personal and interpersonal skills... 

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