Students' first-hand experience on the development of competences: Solving interdisciplinary industry problems

Abstract

The Integrated Master in Industrial Engineering and Management is a very challenging degree, mainly because it encompasses so many different scientific areas. It is very common for students to feel a little bit overwhelmed with the amount of competences that need to be developed and put in practice. The University of Minho takes a lead role in terms of creating projects which allow the interaction with companies as well as promote the development of transversal competences. The Integrated Project of the 4th year of Industrial Engineering and Management of the University of Minho is a Project-Based Learning (PBL) strategy sustained by the interaction with industrial companies in an active engineering learning process. Students should be able to accomplish the project's milestones and assimilate the company's culture in their weekly visits, during the 5 months of the project. The main objective of the present article is to analyse the student's visions of the work experience provided by the realization of this project. The methodology is based on the qualitative analysis of a group of students' narratives related to their visions on the experience. The results show that they perceived the advantages of interdisciplinary learning, development of transversal competences, learning methodologies of team management, and strategies applied in order to deal with the different project's stakeholders. The main result of this project is the recognition of PBL methodology as an efficient and ingenious form or learning that encourages the students to cope with the requirements and challenges of the actual labour market, while developing technical and transversal engineering competences.