Resumen de Improving engineering students’ communication competence: designing innovative learning strategies

Ángel Uruburu Colsa, Isabel Ortiz-Marcos, José Ramón Cobo Benita, Ana Moreno Romero

• This research presents an innovative and formal educational initiative that is aimed at enhancing the development ofengineering students’ specific competencies when studying Engineering Project Management subject. The framework ofthe experience combines theoretical concepts, the development of a real-case project carried out by multidisciplinarygroups of three different universities, the use of software web 2.0 tools, and group and individual assignments of studentsthat play different roles (project managers and team members). Under this scenario, this paper focuses on monitoring thecommunication competence in the ever growing Project Management virtual environment. Factors such as corporallanguage, technical means, stage, and management specific vocabulary among others have been considered in order toassess the students’ performance on this issue. As a main contribution, the paper introduces an ad-hoc rubric that, based onprevious investigations, has been adapted and tested to this specific context. Additionally, the research conducted hasprovided some interesting findings that suggest further actions to improve and better define future rubrics, oriented tocommunication or even other competencies. As specific Project Management subject concerns, it has been detected thatstudents playing the role of Project Managers strengthen their competencies more than those ones that play the role ofTeam Members. It has also been detected that students have more difficulty assimilating concepts related to risk andquality management. However those concepts related with areas of knowledge like scope, time or cost have been betterassimilated by the students.