Project approaches in interaction with industry for the development of professional competences

Abstract

The engineering education involves the development of professional competences. For this purpose, it is necessary to understand the specific engineering field and to identify the specific professional needs of future engineers. Further, it is important to develop the adequate educational approaches that will foster the development of these competences. This paper aims to contribute to identifying the education needs in the field of Industrial Engineering and Management (IEM) based on the professionals perspectives, articulated with internship students and a group of university teachers. It also aims to reflect on two cases of interdisciplinary project approaches of the IEM program at the University of Minho, Portugal, which directly involves the interaction with industrial companies. One of the cases involves courses of semester seven of the IEM program and the other involves four different engineering programs. The triangulation of data from interviews with professionals, focus groups with university teachers and narratives from internship students contributed to identifying competence needs and the contribution of project-based learning in articulation with companies for students’ professional competences development. The analysis of professional needs points to the importance of practicing the professional practice at the level of education and training. Furthermore, the reflection on the results also stresses the relevance of these kinds of approach from the point of view of all the stakeholders, namely students, university teachers and professionals.