Educational Initiatives to Develop Transversal Skills in the Nuclear Engineering Subjects at Universidad Politecnica de Madrid

摘要

Transversal skills are known to be often forgotten in the engineering studies plans or relegated to the will of the professors. The nuclear engineering subjects at the Universidad Politecnica de Madrid are taught in the last courses of the degree or at master and doctorate levels. Therefore, the alumni are expected to be almost ready for the working period of their lives. Throughout the last years, due to the Bologna process, some transversal skills evaluation initiatives have been implemented. Those initiatives were mainly based on doing an additional project, individually or in group, during the semester, and presenting it in public at the end of the semester. Thanks to those initiatives, noticeable lacks were identified in several transversal skills such as oral and written communication, creative thinking and team work. For example, some alumni confessed that it was the first time they had to expose a technical work in public. Those lacks in the transversal skills were also identified by engineering companies. Motivated by those issues, a new project to develop the mentioned skills in nuclear engineering subjects was raised. In the first phase during the courses 2011-2012 and 2012-2013, two subjects were selected as pilot: Nuclear Power Plants (4th course in degree) and Reliability and Risk Analysis (Master in Nuclear Science and Technology). They were chosen by the different level of knowledge, the numbers of students and their origins. The training has been improved during the second phase with the lessons learned of the first phase. In conclusion, following the alumni polls and evaluated results, the training was very effective and the alumni have a positive feedback on it. They think they have developed their transversal skills in a way they feel better prepared for their careers.