Developing a PG Diploma in
Personal and Professional Skills
Plato Kapranos
Department of Materials
Science & Engineering
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What is this all about?
Ask questions?
The learning process
Instructional objectives
Assessing soft skills
Summary
1. Professional Skills
a. Personal Skills
b. Skills for Industry
2. Assessing such skills
3. Assessment paper trail
Scylla
Charybdis
Schooling
Education
Research
Teaching
Lecturing
Teaching
Gatekeeper
Coach:Active/Cooperative Learning
(Student centred instruction)
Professional
advancement
Personal fulfilment
1. Knows everything
G. Tryggvason & D. Apelian
Shaping our World 2012
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Can find information about anything quickly
Knows how to evaluate & use the information
Transform the information to knowledge
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Understands the engineering basics in order to assess what
needs to be done
Can acquire the tools needed and use the proficiently
2. Can do anything
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3. Collaborates
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Has communication & team skills
Understands global issues and can work with anybody
anywhere
4. Innovates
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Has imagination, entrepreneurial spirit and managerial
skills to identify needs, come up with solutions and take
them to the market
1. Networking Skills
2. Working in Teams
3. Communication &
Presentation Skills
4. Time Management
5. Project Management
6. Creative Thinking
7. Getting Motivated
8. Assertiveness
9. Getting the most
from Supervision
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
Conflict & Negotiation
Facilitation
Knowledge Transfer
Research Funding
Innovation & Creativity
Intellectual property
Enterprise &
Entrepreneurs
8. Business Planning
9. Project Management
10.Financial Management
11. Health & safety at Work
Ask questions?
How
When
Where
?
Who
What
Why
I keep six honest serving-men
(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who
(Rudyard Kipling)
• What needs to be learned and what does not need to be
learned?
• When should it be learned and when should it not be learned?
• Why it needs to be learned and why does it not need to be
learned?
• Where is it learned and where is it not learned?
• Who or what assists learning and who or what prevents it?
• How do we know when learning has taken place and how do we
know when it has not?
By being aware of how people learn we can chose purposefully
from a variety of techniques to accomplish our goals...
Provide
direction for
instruction
Instructional
objectives
Convey
intent of
instruction
to others
Provide
guidelines
for testing
Knowledge
Expectations
Comprehension
Past
Learning
experience
process
Attitudes
Performance
skills
Application
Critical
thinking
skills
Evaluation
Objectives
Learning
activities
Preferably:
Never use verbs like:




Learn
Know
Understand
Appreciate
 At the end of
this [...] the
student should
be able to
[action verb, e.g.
List, calculate,
estimate,
explain,
describe,
predict,
optimize, etc] ....
Educational objectives:
1. Knowledge (repeating verbatim): list, state,
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
describe, define, identify...
Comprehension (demonstrating understanding of
terms and concepts): Explain, interpret, summarize,
give examples...
Application (applying learned information):
calculate, solve, apply, show, use, demonstrate...
Analysis (breaking things down to their elements,
formulating theoretical explanations for observed
phenomena): derive, explain, illustrate, select...
Synthesis (creating something, combining
elements in novel ways: formulate, design, devise...
Evaluation (making and justifying value
judgements): select, compare, contrast, criticise...
1) Networking Skills
At the end of the workshop participants will
- Have explored the nature and purpose of networking
- Have developed possible networking opportunities
- Be able to devise a strategy for networking in the
academic environment
3) Communication & Presentation Skills
At the end of the workshop participants will
- Be able to select the key attributes of a good
presentation, including message, interaction, visual aids and
verbal performance
- Have given a presentation and received feedback upon it
- Have a strategy to appraise and improve their
performance
2) Working in Teams
At the end of the workshop participants will
- Have explored their preferences and impact on other
people in a team
- Be able to identify aspects of team theory
- Have practised working and communicating in a team
6) Creative Thinking
At the end of the workshop participants will
- Be able to recognize and explain how they as an
individual approach problems
- Be able to survey a range of creativity techniques
and considered how to implement them
- Have built a toolkit of skills for generating
solutions to different types of problems
7) Getting Motivated
At the end of the workshop participants will
- Have discovered what motivates them
- Have recognised the value of short, medium and longterm goals
- Have generated a strategy for maintaining a motivated,
fulfilling lifestyle within an academic context
8) Assertiveness
At the end of the workshop participants will
-Be able to recognise passive, assertive and aggressive
behaviours
-Be able to explore and interpret the topic of selfawareness, and
-Act the above through role play exercises
1) Conflict & Negotiation
At the end of the workshop participants will
- recognise what is ‘Conflict’ and be able to distinguish
and dispel misconceptions by looking at the theory
- be able to apply a model in a negotiating process
- effectively apply negotiating skills, through role play
3) Knowledge Transfer (KT)
At the end of the workshop participants will
- appreciate the various mechanisms of KT
- describe and propose the appropriate sources of
funding
- Be able to manage KT
6) IP
At the end of the workshop participants will
-Be able to recognise how patents work, pros
& cons, infringement
- Describe other means of IP protection
- able to evaluate the validity of IP through
case studies
7) Enterprise/Entrepreneurs
At the end of the workshop participants will
- Be able to describe what is it? What are they? What do
they do?
- Will illustrate this through entrepreneurial activities
8) Business planning
At the end of the workshop participants will
-Recognise and explain the essence of Motivation;
Leadership, Management and Marketing
- Explain the need for Business planning and demonstrate
that by devising their own Business Plan
10) Financial Management
At the end of the workshop participants will
- Be able to recognise the basics of Management
Accounting and the basics of Financial Accounting
(Balance Sheet, Cash Flow, Profit and Loss, Ratio
Analysis, Costing, Break Even, Investment Appraisal)
- Be able to use them in a Business Plan
2) Facilitation
At the end of the workshop participants will
-be able to select and apply theory and technique
-be able to plan, organize and conduct a meeting
-facilitate a meeting
9) Project Management
At the end of the workshop participants will
-Be able to demonstrate use of PM tools,
propose appropriate resource allocation based
on case studies and evaluate the effectiveness
or otherwise of decisions made
11) Health & Safety at Work
At the end of the workshop participants will
-Be able to appreciate and explain the basics of the Legal
framework in the Health & safety Act and EU Directives
-Be able to appreciate and explain the duties and responsibilities
of Employer/employee
-Be able to summarise the management of H & S regulations
- Be able to recognise the health & safety cultures in the
workplace, analyze them and determine steps to improve or
correct it when necessary
Assessing
Soft
Skills
Fair
Reliable
Rubrics
Checklists
Detailed
Feedback
Grading checklist for Written Reports
Student:
Date:
Project:
Marked by:
Max.
Technical Content (60%)
Abstract clearly identifies purpose and summarises principal content
10
Introduction demonstrates thorough knowledge of relevant background
and prior work
15
Analysis and discussion demonstrate good subject mastery
30
Summary and conclusions appropriate and complete
5
Organization (10%)
Distinct introduction, body, conclusions
5
Content clearly and logically organized, good transitions
5
Presentation (20%)
Correct spelling, grammar and syntax
10
Clear and easy to read
10
Quality of layout and graphics (10%)
10
TOTAL SCORE
100
Score
Comments
Peer Rating Rubric for Team Projects
Your
Name:
Module/Project:
Team Name/Number:
Write the names of the people on your team.
Attends meetings regularly
Contributes to discussions
Has good communication skills
Committed to group goals
Listens effectively
Takes responsibilities seriously
Accepts criticism gracefully
Performs significant tasks
Tasks have technical content
Completes tasks on time
TOTAL MARK
Instructions:
1. For each attribute listed below, assign a number using
the 0-5 scale to describe each person’s contribution to
group work to date.
2. These evaluations are used to assign individual grades
from group grades.
3. Your responses are confidential.
Rating scale:
• 5 excellent
• 4 satisfactory
• 3 ordinary
• 2 marginal
• 1 unsatisfactory
The assessment and its paper trail…
On line pre and post workshop
exercises
Occasional use of Electronic Voting
Systems (Clickers) in class
Classroom individual and group
exercises
Finally your personal portfolio on
the series of workshops
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Personality Types
1.Extroversion-Introversion: describes the source and
direction of energy for a person, i.e. for the extrovert both source
and direction of energy is the external world whilst for the introvert,
the source of energy will be their internal world.
2.Sensing-Intuition: Sensing defines the method by which the
person perceives information; sensing persons will rely on information
they receive directly from their external world while intuitive persons
rely on information they receive from their internal or imaginative
worlds.
3.Thinking-Feeling: these define how people process information
they receive, i.e. thinking people will mainly make decisions based on
logic whilst feeling people will do the same based on their emotions.
4.Judging-Perceiving: deals with how people implement the
information after it has been processed, i.e. judging people organize
their lives and act according strictly to set plans, whilst perceiving
individuals will improvise, adapt and seek alternatives as the situation
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demands.
EN
37
5
16
17
10
31
48
47
-1
7
14
2
4
-8
-3
13
32
19
2
2
34
-6
7
3
-3
-6
-5
-6
-14
3
28
-19
-22
22
-2
-35
42
20
15
28
21
37
-25
-6
-20
EF
32
-3
2
-28
4
16
42
-11
8
13
-17
29
7
-19
6
29
-21
16
-16
-8
7
59
-1
44
-6
-35
-10
35
2
-7
39
-28
17
-8
-15
-1
12
18
18
24
8
70
-25
16
-16
ES
-25
-33
-22
-33
-15
-31
-14
-41
-38
-24
-36
14
-21
-58
-53
-12
7
-31
3
36
-28
6
-18
4
-41
-31
-67
-5
-13
-9
-22
-31
-34
-66
-14
-10
-8
-30
-25
-22
-4
-25
-24
-5
5
ET
-2
9
14
28
-8
17
20
39
20
14
5
54
32
19
-6
4
4
26
22
30
-12
9
24
6
-5
15
15
10
14
24
-23
34
5
30
10
24
0
-7
37
49
9
20
-13
28
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Assigning Members to Teams
Individuals that have similar mode scores for a particular attribute will be
assembled into one of a number of ‘affinity groups’; the affinity groups are
to be defined as follows:
•Idea Individuals (EN): these individuals are supposedly good at generating
ideas. This does not mean that others are not good at this or that these
particular individuals are necessarily good at seeing their ideas through to
implementation. They should be good at proposing ideas.
•People Individuals (EF): these are individuals that should be good at
keeping group members together, forming relationships between team
members and casting friendships with others.
•Action Individuals (ES): these are the hands-on experimenting types, the
operators and model builders and they ‘see’ the relationships between
experiments and models.
•Organization Individuals (ET): these are the deadline oriented, result
driven individuals. They are good at schedules, goal setting and meeting
deadlines.
•Wild Card Individuals: The ones preferring some of the other models.
They are good at complementing others and can fill the ‘gaps’ in different
roles.
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•
•
•
•
•
What is this all about?
Ask questions?
The learning process
Instructional objectives
Assessing soft skills
Summary
Summary