Improving working life competencies in a project work course - self assessment as a tool to improve self-confidence

Teaching generic working life skills as an integrated part of curriculum is one of the main targets in the Aalto university strategy, and originates from graduate surveys and common feedback from industry co-operation. Future employers of graduates from technical universities require a wider variety of engineering skills in order to expedite an engineering career in industry [1, 2, 3]. The target to integrate generic working life skills into the curriculum of the Master’s degree programme of automation and electrical engineering was evaluated in various ways. One outcome of the process has been to include a new programme-wide project work course to improve working life skills and to learn how to integrate in practice the knowledge obtained from the theory courses. Project-based learning offers a good framework to gain experience in problem solving, social interaction and management, to mention just a few benefits. The teachers and instructors of the project topics offer support, by facilitating the learning process and helping to overcome the common pitfalls that may happen in any project.