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The Future of Engineering Education: Part 3. Developing Critical Skills, by D. R. Woods, R. M. Felder, A. Rugarcia, J. E. Stice, Chemical Engineering Education, Spring 2000, pp. 108-117. (The paper in its entirety is available on the Internet at http://www2.ncsu.edu/effective_teaching/) [81 references]

Summarized by J. T. P. Yao, 7/3/00

"… Fostering the development of skills in students is challenging, to say the least. Process skills - which have to do with attitudes and values as much as knowledge - are particularly challenging in that they are hard to explicitly define, let alone to develop and assess. … In this paper, we will suggest research-backed methods that will help students to develop critical skills and the confidence to apply them. …"

"Eight Basic Activities to Promote Skill Development

…

Identify the skills you want your students to develop, include them in the course syllabus and (…) the university catalog, and commute their importance to the students. …
Use research, not personal intuition, to identify the target skills, and share the research with the students. …
Make explicit the implicit behavior associated with successful application of the skills. …
Provide extensive practice in the application of the skills, using carefully structured activities, and provide prompt constructive feedback on the students' efforts using evidence-based targets. …
Encourage monitoring. …
Encourage reflection. …
Grade the process, not just the product. …
Use a standard assessment and feedback form. …"

"Developing Problem-Solving Skills

In addition to the eight basic activities

Use standard research-based problem-solving strategy across several (…) courses in an instructional program. …
Solve some problems in depth. …
Help students make connections between the problem statement, the identification of required technical knowledge, and the problem solution. …

Writing skills - … Long essays are not required: single paragraphs can be effective at facilitating the development of writing skills and do not impose a heavy grading burden on the instructor. … Encourage them to brainstorm ideas about the topic and about the target audience needs and the topic. Suggest that they free-write without critiquing themselves and then discard sections that don't work.

Teamwork skills - … Assign a chairperson/coordinator for every meeting … Have the group hold a 'norms' meeting soon after they are formed … Ask students to complete inventories … Incorporate formal team-building exercises as part of your implementation of cooperative learning.

Self-assessment skills - Have the students write resumes … Include self-assessment as part of what you do to help develop any other skill …

Lifelong learning skills and problem-based learning - Sense problem or need; Identify learning issues; Create learning goals and assessment criteria; Select resources; Carry out the learning activities; Design a process to assess the learning; Do the assessment; Reflect on the learning process. …

Change-management skills - People inevitably encounter unexpected and stressful changes in their lives, but successful people are able to cope with the changes in such a way that they emerge with renewed or even greater strength in performance, self-confidence, and interpersonal relationships, even if they initially experience losses in these domains. … The first six of the eight basic activities described previously apply to the development of change-management skills. In addition,

… tell students about the stages of reaction to stressful change. …
When using student-centered instruction, acknowledge to the students that it may be stressful to some of them but make it clear that you are doing it for good reasons. …
Run a workshop on the management of change."

[Readers who are interested in this article are encouraged to read the original paper in its entirety. Other summary notes on faculty reward systems are available on the Internet at http://lohman.tamu.edu under the heading "Summaries of Papers ..."]

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