Communication Course for Students in the CDIO Programme

Interpersonal skills are becoming more and more important, including communications skills. However the engineering education has traditionally focused on technical skills rather than on personal development. Working conditions of the typical engineer nowadays will include communication, teamwork and leadership so it is most important that modern education for engineering students meets the demands of the business life of today, which are an engineer who can solve both technical and humanistic problems; thus creating god results from an all round prospect.

For this reason it is important to implement practise of interpersonal skills in the engineering education. The focus of this paper is on the development of the communication skills for the engineering students since you are communicating no matter what you do. You do it verbally with words or you do it nonverbally with body language, facial expression and tone of voice.

When transmitting a message face to face 7% is verbally by word, 38% nonverbally by tone of voice and 55% by body language. In other words, 93% of the message is transferred nonverbally. Even silence is a kind of communication. Since communication is such a big part of our everyday life, it should be something we practice most consciously in order to improve our capabilities in this difficult field.

This workshop is an introduction to communication and will give the CDIO staff a personal idea of a different approach to communicating between students. The workshop will consist of various small exercises, where the participants will develop their awareness, and at the same time it will be an eye-opener of how it is possible to create a new kind of communication courses for students.

Since this workshop is limited to two hours, it will only be possible to introduce and inspire the participants of how to use the knowledge in their own courses.