Soft skills

Management Trainer(s) Management trainers are individuals that provide soft skill training programs to the other employees at the pharmaceutical manufacturing site. The management trainers are responsible for at least the following ... 

Develop leadership and other soft skills, such as critical thinking and business acumen. 

Another benefit of ESPRIT reported by students artd faculty is the focus on soft skills. All of the exams involve an oral defense in front of the entire class and the opportunity to receive critiques on nontechnical skills. Some modules are in English. Nearly all students at ESPRIT have internships outside of the school. However, there are some complaints registered. For the ESPRIT students, alternating every three days in school with three days at their senior project is very difficult—too short a frequency for each part— and they might have preferred the stmcture in public engineering schools. 

The role of a soimd foimdation in math, science, and engineering principles is well established. It is very important, however, to emphasize the role of soft skills in making a successful engineer as will be detailed in subsequent sections of this chapter. Our view of essential competencies of engineers has also been reported in several studies (Abdulwahed et al. 2013). Even though all the skills/competencies listed above are important, this chapter is not intended to treat each one of them in detail rather, we will focus on some aspects that are extremely important from our perspective, namely critical thinking and problem solving. 

The waves of industrial revolution mentioned in section 18.3 are sometimes referred to as waves of innovation and industrial development. They are also called Kondratiev waves, or K-waves. What matters for the purpose of this ehapter is not the theory of cycles and waves in industrial development, but rather the word Iimo-vation, which is common to all those historical industrial developments. Research and irmovation are directly related to and dependent on the soft skills mentioned in the previous section. Critical thinking, problem solving, and collaboration are key to successful R D programs in industrial laboratories. 

The identification of non-technical skills rests partly on studies and direct observation of experts, but also on analyses of accidents in many different arenas where a lack of these skills has precipitated or failed to prevent disaster. As Flin, O Connor and Crichton point out, these skills are essential for day-to-day work as well as in crises, but emerge as particularly critical at times of danger. Front line personnel are the last line of defence, whether in acting promptly to prevent an oil refinery fire or in controlling bleeding during an operation. These skills are not soft skills but critical skills that are essential to safe and efficient technical operations communication usually means communication about technical issues, decision making usually means decisions about technical issues and so on. Nor are these skills tied to particularly personalities. Perhaps some people are naturally better communicators or... 

Universities have tried to adapt their programs to these demands. One way or the other, they have implemented systems to provide students with the evolving sets of competences that are considered necessary. The basic demands have evolved from environmental concern, to soft skills, sustainability, ethics and social integration of the profession. The ways of teaching these subjects have been diversified and will be covered below. However, every subject presents distinctive features that exert an influence on their consideration. 

When the incorporation of wider concepts like soft skills, ethics, sustainability or the implication of engineering in public debate was intended, implementation was more complicated. Some institutions did not have the experience, knowledge or the strong belief that were needed to fulfill the requirements. The main approaches adopted have been ... 

This approach has been used typically to develop soft skills. It consists in the use of a teaching method involving tasks that develop students communication abilities, teamwork and may also be used for cultivating ethical, sustainable or societal concern (Riley 2011). The weaknesses of this system are similar to the previous one. 

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