ADVEISOR − LEARNING BY DOING − THE EXPERIENCE OF SOFT SKILLS IN AN ENGINEERING PROJECT CREATED AND ACCOMPLISHED BY STUDENTS

Since the introduction of the bologna process, the goal of a complete university education is not only to teach technical skills but also soft skills. In 2007, the Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology under supervision of the Institute of Energy Conversion Technology at the Technische Universität München, Munich, started a project, in which up to 100 students are taking part each year. The English word advisor was merged with the abbreviation of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology (EI) to form the project name adveisor, the pronunciation stays the same.
In the first semester up to 12 students, who received professional trainings in advance, are leading groups of 14 first semester students. Due to the fact, that the whole project is organized by older students and accomplished by first semester students, both are supposed to experience non-technical skills by themselves, such as team work, communication, presentation, project and time management and group dynamics. They work together in workshops to learn about soft skills and to get a basic idea of teamwork for the second semester, where the first semester students have to built up a technical project on their own. Mentioning only a few passed topics, such as "Mini-Segway" or "Rubik's Cube Solver", the high complexity of these projects becomes clear. The tutors' job is changing from leading the group to supervising this project process and group dynamics without interrupting with technical advice. Therefore, the first semester students divide the project into some sub-projects, so that the whole problem can be solved in sub-teams with only few previous technical knowledge. Finally, the students present their projects in a final event in front of around 500 people and a judging panel consisting of three university professors and three industry partners. During the whole program, research assistants from the Institute only intervene regarding financial, organizational and security affairs.
At the end of each year, the students obtain a certain amount of ECTS (European Credit Transfer System). Beyond that, they get to know the whole research team already at the beginning of their studies and many are staying to do their internship or their thesis at our institute. The experience of soft skills, interacting in a team or presenting the results became noticeable in their scientific work. In the past six years the project was more and more improved by the students with a lot of ideas to make the program famous throughout the television and newspaper articles. The research assistants elaborated fully developed grading systems and new methods to complete the program schedule.