Active Listening for Engineering Students

Employers of engineers seek to have their engineers use active-listening skills. Good active listeners demonstrate skills such as avoiding judgmental responses and giving supportive and appropriate verbal and nonverbal feedback. To support students in developing active-listening skills, we developed teaching modules covering sixteen learning outcomes, to be delivered across a four-year engineering program. These modules have been designed to integrate with the program's core content. Informal pilot testing with seniors in a capstone design course suggests that this curricular approach enables students to understand and to be able to practice introductory active-learning skills.