PBL of Doctoral Students in
Collaboration with Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs): ‘Thinking like a
professional engineer’. Real life tasks and scenarios
Dr Plato Kapranos (Materials Science and Engineering)
What is this about?
The teaching of transferrable skills in the Doctoral Training
Centre for Advanced Metallics is done in the form of a Diploma in Personal
& Professional Skills and such skills are embedded in the students’
consciousness by practice. The
development of Problem Based Learning experience through a two week long
exercise where groups of students tackle ‘real-life’ problems at an SME has
been organised and successfully taken place over the past two years and
students, staff and industrial partners have all felt the benefits. This work
shows the multiplying effect that the SME case studies have on student skill
and attitude development and as a result their employability.
How will colleagues
benefit?
Colleagues will see how the use of 'real-life' problem solving can
be used to use the student effort in order to focus and sharpen the use of
transferrable skills that have been taught in other parts of a structured
course. The reality of the situation
faced, the tight time limits afforded, the responsibility to function and
deliver as part of a group of 'professional' consultants act as multipliers of
the skills employed towards generating and proposing solutions. Students see in
practice what transferrable skills mean to them and of course employers are
suitably impressed when they see these skills they sought from graduates being
used to the full.
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