Chapter 6 Transferable Skills Development in Engineering Students: Analysis of Service- Learning Impact

  Part I Reflections on Practice

Abstract

The abstract discusses how engineering education often focuses primarily on technical aspects, overlooking critical non-technical components like ethics, sustainability, and transferable skills such as communication, leadership, and mentoring. Many students perceive engineering solely as technical work, underestimating the importance of these non-technical elements. The authors conducted an assessment of student written reflections from two distinct service-learning engineering design projects. The goal was to evaluate student attitudes towards these service-learning experiences and to assess their awareness and appreciation of developing transferable skills. The reflections were categorized into three areas: academic enhancement, civic engagement, and personal growth skills. Findings indicated that while service-learning pedagogy has improved students' understanding of the importance of communication skills, many still do not recognize leadership, negotiation, coping with design setbacks, scheduling, and mentoring as integral parts of engineering.

6.1 Introduction

In 2005, the civil and environmental engineering programs at the University of Vermont received a grant from the National Science Foundation for department-level reform. The main objective was to integrate a systems approach into their ABET-accredited civil and environmental engineering programs. This approach emphasizes considering long-term social, environmental, and economic factors in sustainable engineering designs, aiming to prepare students to become forward-thinking leaders who understand the broader impacts of engineered solutions.

Traditionally, engineering curricula have focused on a reductionist approach to problem-solving, often emphasizing technical aspects and overlooking non-technical areas like ethics, personal/interpersonal skills, leadership, and teamwork. The University of Vermont's reform aimed to educate the "whole engineer," with a special focus on these non-technical aspects.

To achieve this, the program incorporated service-learning projects into key courses. These projects were aimed at promoting civic engagement, social and sustainability awareness, and developing teamwork and other personal/interpersonal skills, referred to as transferable skills. The motivation behind integrating service-learning was to highlight the importance and practical application of transferable skills, which were often undervalued or not recognized as part of "real" engineering by students. While previous assessments indicated that students recognized the importance of written and oral presentation skills, there was still a lack of appreciation for other transferable skills like leadership, teamwork, negotiation, mentoring, and scheduling, which are crucial in engineering practice.

6.2 Motivation

The motivation for the Department Level Reform grant at the University of Vermont's civil and environmental engineering programs was influenced by various reports and papers from the past decade. These documents highlighted the importance of developing transferable skills in engineering education for the 21st century. Key sources include publications by the National Academy of Engineering, the National Research Council, the National Science Board, and the American Society of Civil Engineers. These reports also advocated for the inclusion of sustainable practices, a systems approach to problem-solving, and inquiry-based service learning in engineering curricula.

In response, the university incorporated service-learning projects into eight required and elective courses in their civil and environmental engineering programs. This approach aligned with the University of Vermont's initiatives, like service learning, environmental mission, and the Office of Sustainability. More details on the reform can be found in various publications and the program's website.

The department initially hypothesized that there would be a similar level of acceptance and appreciation for service learning across two specific engineering courses: a junior-level Modeling Environmental and Transportation Systems course and the Senior Capstone Design course. However, due to some negative student responses to the junior-level course, they revised their hypothesis to suggest that students might not value all types of transferable skills equally.

6.3 Background

Service learning is a strategy that combines community engagement with university education, benefiting both students and community partners through meaningful activities. Critical written reflections are a key aspect of this learning experience, helping students link their service activities with course content and foster deeper understanding and personal growth. These reflections can take various forms, including in-class discussions, journals, written reports, and oral presentations. Guided reflection questions allow students to explore specific project issues, develop solutions, and process their emotions and relationships.

The University of Vermont used service learning in their civil and environmental engineering programs, implementing it across their curriculum. The effectiveness of this approach was assessed using various methods, including student surveys, focus groups, and interviews. This assessment aimed to evaluate students' attitudes towards interdisciplinary service-learning experiences, their understanding of non-technical aspects of engineering, and the development of transferable skills. The paper reports on the evaluation of students' reflections to assess their appreciation for these non-technical aspects and transferable skills within the engineering education context.

This approach, detailed in several publications, aimed to understand student perspectives on the roles and responsibilities of engineers, integrating service learning into the curriculum, and developing service-learning research projects. Despite sometimes being viewed as anecdotal, qualitative data from students' reflections provided valuable insights into their attitudes and understanding, complementing quantitative results. The assessment mainly focused on students' weekly and end-of-semester reflections in two required undergraduate courses in civil and environmental engineering.

6.3.1 Course Development

The course development section focuses on integrating service-learning projects into two design courses, a junior-level systems course and a senior capstone course, in civil and environmental engineering. These projects were chosen for several reasons:

Open-Ended Design Problems: Both courses dealt with open-ended design challenges, which are essential for fostering academic development and real-world problem-solving skills.

Enhancing Academic and Civic Engagement: The projects aimed to enhance students' academic growth, increase their civic engagement, and reinforce important transferable skills, including personal and interpersonal skills, teamwork, leadership, and mentoring.

Manageable Class Sizes: The relatively small number of students in each course (31 in the junior-level course and 30 in the senior-level course) made it feasible to provide a meaningful service-learning experience and to effectively monitor and assess students' weekly written reflections.

Assessment of Student Attitudes and Skills Development: The reflections from these courses, although not guided, provided substantial data to assess similarities and differences in student attitudes towards their service-learning experiences. This included evaluating the development and awareness of transferable skills as part of their engineering education.

Demographics: Among the 27 students common to both courses, 7 were women, providing a diverse range of perspectives in the assessment.

6.3.2 CE134-Engineering Design Mentoring

In the CE134-Engineering Design Mentoring course at the University of Vermont, a unique service-learning project was implemented, involving collaboration among university engineering students, IBM engineers, and the ECHO Lake Aquarium and Science Center. The project aimed to mentor home-schooled children, aged 11–14, on the engineering design process. The teams, consisting of 2–3 home-schooled children, 2–3 university students, and an IBM volunteer, were tasked with designing innovative mobility solutions inspired by biomimicry.

Biomimicry, defined as innovation inspired by nature, was central to this project. It involves examining the natural world to find sustainable solutions to human problems, utilizing the evolutionary process of biological systems to optimize complex issues. An example of biomimicry is Velcro, inspired by the way burdock thistles attach to animal fur.

In this course, student teams used biomimicry to invent methods for moving people, goods, and other items, considering typical transportation-related constraints like congestion, pollution, and safety hazards. The project constituted 25% of the course grade and was divided into 62-hour activities, each mirroring a step in the engineering design process. The first session was focused on defining the problem, with an introduction to biomimicry and the logistics of the course. Student reflections on each design step were used to provide insights into the learning process.

6.3.3 CE 175-Senior Capstone Design

The CE 175-Senior Capstone Design course at the University of Vermont is a comprehensive project involving multiple sub-disciplines of civil and environmental engineering. This capstone project is a significant component for ABET accreditation, and its format varies across programs. Each year, the instructor collaborates with local towns and non-profit organizations to identify service-learning projects. Students indicate their project preferences and qualifications in proposals, and teams are formed based on these preferences, as well as their technical and non-technical skills.

Examples from the Spring 2009 projects include designing stormwater management systems, a green roof for a historical structure, a parking lot, and landslide mitigation alternatives. Projects required surveying, soil sampling, hydraulic information collection, site condition analysis, system design or retrofitting strategies, cost estimation, and research on relevant regulations and permits. The course grade predominantly depended on the design, report, and final presentation, with a small portion (5%) for written reflections. The projects emphasized both technical and non-technical aspects, including economic analyses, multiple oral presentations, draft report writing, and considerations of short-term and long-term environmental and social impacts. Teamwork, ethics, and professional conduct were also key focus areas.

Student reflections from the capstone course highlighted the importance of transferable skills like communication and teamwork. Students reflected on their growth in communicating complex engineering concepts to non-experts, understanding and complying with state regulations, effective report writing, time management, and working collaboratively in diverse teams. These skills were not only critical for the project but also valuable for their professional development, as evidenced by their experiences in job interviews and other professional settings.

6.4 Methodology

The methodology section describes the statistical analysis conducted on the students' end-of-semester written reflections in the CE 134 and CE 175 courses. The analysis was performed using JMP 8.0 for statistical methods and HyperRESEARCH™ 2.8.3 software for quantifying the qualitative data from the students' reflections.

HyperRESEARCH™ allowed for flexible coding of text data (like assigning specific codes to words, phrases, or sentences) and facilitated the retrieval and frequency analysis of similarly coded material. In this study, each sentence in the students’ reflections was categorized into one or more of 248 different codes within HyperRESEARCH™. The frequency of these coded phrases was then tallied, with codes appearing more than 15 times across the two courses considered significant.

There was a slight bias in the data towards the CE 134 course because the students' reflections in this course had a minimum length requirement of 2.5 pages, while the CE 175 reflections varied from half a page to 2.5 pages, as there was no specified page length. To address this discrepancy, the raw code frequencies were normalized against the total number of words written by each student before any statistical analysis was conducted. This normalization helped to account for the variation in reflection lengths and ensured a more balanced and accurate analysis of the data.

6.5 Results

In the CE 134 and CE 175 courses at the University of Vermont, students submitted weekly reflections to monitor their engagement with the service-learning activities. The results showed that mentoring home-schooled children in engineering design using biomimicry was effective for teaching engineering design. Students expressed that teaching biomimicry engaged the children and enhanced their own understanding of the design process.

Despite positive weekly feedback, end-of-semester reflections and evaluations painted a slightly different picture. While the majority responded favorably in both courses, a small number of students in CE 134 rated their service-learning experience low and expressed unwillingness to volunteer again. This minority also impacted classroom dynamics during discussions.

The student reflections were categorized into academic enhancement, civic engagement, and personal growth skills. Students wrote most about personal growth, followed by academic enhancements and civic engagement. Initially, it seemed that civic engagement might be the cause of student unrest, but further analysis showed more positive reflections about civic engagement in CE 134 than in the senior capstone course.

HyperRESEARCH™ software was used to code end-of-semester reflections. Codes that appeared more than 15 times across the courses were analyzed, with most falling into the category of transferable skills. A statistical comparison of these codes between the two courses revealed significant differences in eight coded phrases, emphasizing different student experiences and attitudes in the two service-learning projects. These differences were significant at the 99% confidence interval.

6.6 Discussion

In the discussion section, the authors analyze student reflections from two service-learning courses, CE 134 and CE 175, to determine if students value all types of transferable skills equally. The analysis reveals that while students acknowledge the academic benefits of these courses, there are significant differences in their views on civic engagement and personal growth.

Key findings include:

Academic Enhancement: Students in both courses recognized the enhancement of their academic learning.

Civic Engagement and Personal Growth: Differences were more pronounced in civic engagement and personal growth aspects. CE 134 students had more negative reflections on personal growth (like leadership and teamwork), while CE 175 students reflected more negatively on civic engagement.

Communication Skills: Both groups recognized the importance of written and oral communication, a positive development since earlier assessments suggested students undervalued these skills.

Service Learning Misconceptions: Despite efforts to differentiate service learning from community service, students in CE 134 perceived their mentoring project as more of a service task compared to the senior capstone project in CE 175.

Transferable Skills Perception: Although personal growth was a common theme in CE 134 reflections, students didn’t always recognize skills like leadership and mentoring as part of "real" engineering. This indicates a need to better articulate the importance of these skills in engineering education.

Curriculum and Pedagogy Improvements: The experience led to changes in curriculum and teaching methods. Design and creative elements from CE 134 are now integrated into earlier courses, and syllabi have evolved to clearly outline learning objectives and outcomes, emphasizing the broader scope of engineering beyond just math and science.

The authors conclude that more explicit communication about the value of various assignments and projects is needed, along with highlighting the benefits of hands-on learning opportunities. This approach aims to broaden students’ understanding of engineering and its multifaceted nature.

6.7 Conclusions

The conclusions of the study highlight that students in both service-learning courses recognized the importance of verbal and written communication skills for engineers. However, there was a notable disconnect in student evaluations regarding other transferable skills. Many students did not consider leadership, teamwork, negotiation skills, coping with design setbacks, scheduling, and mentoring as integral parts of "real" engineering and seemed less interested in these aspects compared to other engineering elements.

Despite challenges in integrating non-technical aspects into engineering curricula, understanding student perspectives is a crucial step for educators to make further curriculum and teaching adjustments. One significant advantage of the CE 134 service-learning project was the opportunity it provided for students to interact with peers and engineers in non-traditional settings, pushing them beyond their usual comfort zones. Such experiences, although challenging, are essential for real growth and are a fundamental part of higher education.