Proceedings of the 2nd International Research Symposium on PBL, 3-4 December 2009, Melbourne, Australia

The Connection between Project Learning Approaches and

the Industrial Demand for Transversal Competencies
Diana Mesquita1, Rui M. Lima2, Rui M. Sousa3, Maria Assuno Flores4
1, 2, 3

Production and Systems Department, School of Engineering, University of Minho, Campus

of Azurm, 4800-058 Guimares, Portugal (diana@dps.uminho.pt, rml@dps.uminho.pt,
rms@dps.uminho.pt)
4
Institute of Education, University of Minho, Campus of Gualtar, 4710-057 Braga, Portugal
(aflores@iep.uminho.pt)

Abstract
The importance of transversal competencies (also known as generic skills or graduate attributes) in
engineering curricula is recognized by all stakeholders: faculty staff, who expect to see in their
students the development of a set of skills and abilities; students, who expect to be able to
successfully join in the industries; employers, who expect from graduates an added value for their
industries. According to the Bologna Declaration the teaching/learning process should focus both
on technical and transversal competencies,. For this reason, the Integrated Masters Course on
Industrial Management and Engineering (IME) at University of Minho has been implementing, over
the past five years, an innovative learning/teaching methodology based on interdisciplinary
projects. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the employers perspective about the necessary
transversal competencies for this specific engineering area, based on job offers published in a
Portuguese weekly newspaper, in 2007-2008. Additionally, the teachers perspective about the
definition, development and assessment of transversal competencies is also analyzed, based on
th
st
data collected from six interviews in the context of the IME project of the 4 year, 1 semester
(2007/08). Findings show that the number of job offers for the IME area increased from 89 in 2007
to 254 in 2008. The main transversal competencies required by the employers in this period are
basically the same: foreign languages; information and communication technologies; teamwork;
planning/organization; leadership. In fact, these are the competencies that students should acquire
and develop through the IME curriculum. The adopted project-based learning methodology
promotes the development of teamwork and project management competencies, which are
essential for the success of students teams. The analysis of the connection between the
employers perspective and the project approach included in the IME curriculum is now more
relevant because the first graduates under this new learning approach are entering the real
professional context.
Keywords: engineering curricula, transversal competencies, industrial demand, project-based
learning

1. INTRODUCTION
Considering the evolution of professional contexts, new challenges arise at higher education institutions.
The role of the universities is increasingly important for the development of competencies to promote the
employability of their students. Universities courses are designed to provide their graduates with a
specific professional profile. However, it is crucial to analyze: (1) if the designed profile (by the university)
is aligned with the demanded profile (by the employers), and, (2) if the developed profile (by the students)
corresponds to the designed profile. This alignment depends not only on the curricula, but also on the
methods, resources, goals and learning support.

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Proceedings of the 2nd International Research Symposium on PBL, 3-4 December 2009, Melbourne, Australia

Amongst the goals of Bologna process are the need to establish the European area of higher education
and to promote the European System of Higher Education. The principles of Bologna Declaration are: (a)
adoption of a system of easily readable and comparable degrees; (b) adoption of a system essentially
based on two main cycles - undergraduate and graduate; (c) establishment of a system of credits (ECTS)
to promote student mobility; (d) promotion of European co-operation in quality assurance; (e) Promotion of
the necessary European dimensions in higher education, particularly regarding the curriculum
development, inter-institutional co-operation, mobility schemes and integrated programs of study, training
and research.[1]
Thus, he Integrated Masters Course on Industrial Management and Engineering (IME), in the Department
of Production and Systems (DPS) at University of Minho, is the result of the adjustment of the previous
course to the Bologna model and is now on its fifth edition. Special care has been taken to achieve an
engineer profile that corresponds to the demand perceived by the people involved in the adjustment
process. This demand, perceived over the years, confirms the need to strengthen some subject areas and
to develop transversal competencies such as teamwork, autonomy, communication and critical thinking.
Thus, IME area (Industrial Management and Engineering) prepares professionals for organization and
management of resources, in industry and services, in order to improve the companies performance and
overall functioning.
The curriculum of IME, organized in five academic years, combines four main areas: basic sciences,
engineering sciences, complementary sciences and expertise sciences. Considering this structure, an
analysis of the demand of IME professionals allowed the classification of thirteen demand categories,
namely: (1) Production organization; (2) Production management; (3) Product design; (4) Logistics; (5)
Quality; (6) Maintenance; (7) Project management; (8) Automation; (9) Ergonomics, study of work, safety
and hygiene; (10) Industrial costs and financial management; (11) Industrial marketing; (12) Industrial
optimization operations research, and; (13) Statistics and numerical methods. However, a technical
profile is not sufficient to meet the high demands, and competitiveness, that characterize the labour
market. The aforementioned analysis of demand also shows that transversal competencies are
undoubtedly a key factor, complementing the technical profile, to ensure the employability.
It seems obvious that the direct contact between students and companies is an excellent approach to
identify and understand not only the technical competencies, but also the transversal ones, required by
the companies. For this reason, the IME has always sought to promote co-operation projects with
industry. Traditionally the students had a single direct contact with industry, occurring only on the last year
th
of the course (5 year), in the form of an individual project with a duration of 6 months (course's final
project/training). As this contact was considered to occur too ate and in an insufficient mannner, the IME
has extended the use of Project-Led Education (PLE) methodology (already adopted even before the IME
course restructuring subsequent to the Bologna Declaration), in order to enhance the interaction with
industry (TABLE 1).
Year
2005/06
2006/07
2007/08
2007/08
2008/09

Project
PLE-IME 5.1
PLE-IME 5.1
PLE-IME 4.1
PIEI 4.1
PLE-IME 4.1

2008/09

PIEI 4.1

Companies Involved
1 (wooden frames)
1 (car audio)
1 (hospital equipment)
1 (hospital equipment)
4 (car audio, metallurgic,
textile, metrology)
th
st
(4 year 1 sem.)
8
(4 teams)
1 (fuel pumps)
TABLE 1. PLE editions in interaction with industry
th

st

(5 year 1 sem.)
th
st
(5 year 1 sem.)
th
st
(4 year 1 sem.)
th
st
(4 year 1 sem.)
th
st
(4 year 1 sem.)

Students involved
16 (2 teams)
19 (3 teams)
28 (4 teams)
8
(4 teams)
28 (4 teams)

Thus, besides the courses final project (individual project/training), students are previously involved in a
PLE edition in interaction with industry (team project). The two PIEI 4.1 editions (Innovation and
Entrepreneurship Integrated Project) included in TABLE1, are special PLE editions, in which each team
has 8 students from 4 different engineering courses [2, 3].

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Proceedings of the 2nd International Research Symposium on PBL, 3-4 December 2009, Melbourne, Australia

2. TRANSVERSAL COMPETENCIES IN ENGINEERING EDUCATION

The Bologna Declaration has changed the way of thinking and practice in higher education institutions in
Europe. The importance of other competencies besides the technical competencies is raised. In this
context, the Dublin Descriptors [4] defined in 2004 a set of competencies that students in any scientific
field should acquire and develop during their learning process: adaptation to new situations, teamwork,
creativity and communication. These groups of competencies, increasingly enhanced in 2007 by the
London Communiqu [5], are considered an added value to deal with the employability issue. Adaptability,
working in teams, creativity and communication are recognized as key competencies for the graduates, to
ensure competitiveness in the labour market. So, it is the responsibility of higher education institutions to
provide conditions, resources and learning opportunities to develop these competencies which involve
knowledge, attitudes, values and skills related to professional practice. The engineering education has
focused the attention to this issue. The engineer practice, in addition to application of technical
knowledge, also involves how to lead persons, how to solve problems, how to plan and organize, how to
encourage and how to learn [6, 7, 8, 9]. For instance, the Accreditation Board for Engineering and
Technology (ABET), uses this kind of criteria [10]: ability to function on multidisciplinary teams; ability to
communicate effectively; ability to engage in life-long learning, for accreditation of engineering programs
in the United States.
A literature review shows that the technical competencies itself are not enough to meet the demands of
globalized world, where the speed of events, tasks, and information spreading requires that excellent
good engineer, beyond the technical domain which also requires a constant updating, is able to lead,
decide, manage, plan, adapt, anticipate [11]. Therefore, these abilities, which are apart from the technical
domain, are equally important for the professional engineer profile, and, thus, they should be addressed in
the organization, planning and implementation of engineering curricula. In fact () that practical job skills,
which are seen by some authors to be the heart of engineering, are still not considered as fundamental
knowledge in todays universities [12]. The designation of these competencies, that we are giving
particular emphasis, is different throughout the literature: transversal competencies, generic
competencies, soft skills, key competencies and other terms. One important challenge in engineering
education is the integration of the transversal competencies in engineering curricula [13].
In some universities, and courses, the project approaches allow students to develop a set of transversal
competencies in different project situations [14]: (1) Project Exercise the project aim is for the student to
apply the knowledge and skills already acquired; (2) Project Component the aim is broader and has
greater range because the theme is linked to a real situation (it is intended that students develop skills
such us problem solving and autonomy), and; (3) Project Orientation implies monitoring of the learning
process, and focuses on contents that support the project. It is a learning approach oriented to the project
and to the problems that have to be solved. The case study presented in this paper is based on the third
type of project approach Project Orientation -, in which the learning approach is focused on the project
to be developed by application of different courses to solve a particular problem occurring in a company.
th
The Project-Led Education (PLE) implemented in the 4 year of IME at the University of Minho is a
learning opportunity for the students to develop not only technical competencies but also a set of
transversal competencies, because they have to: (1) deal with open-ended problems, and, (2) interact
with companies which have their own problems, cultures, products, processes and so on. The next
sections (3 and 4) will describe two perspectives about the transversal competences: the employers
perspectives, based on an analysis of jobs offers carried out in two consecutive years; and faculty staff
views, based on interviews carried out in PLE context.

3. TRANSVERSAL COMPETENCIES EMPLOYERS PERSPECTIVE

From all job offers published in 2007 by one of the largest Portuguese weekly newspaper (Expresso),
there was a selection of 89 considered to be as demanding for candidates with competencies that IME
graduates develop during their course. In 2008 the number was 254 and, thus, an impressive increase
was observed in the demand for this professional activity.

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Proceedings of the 2nd International Research Symposium on PBL, 3-4 December 2009, Melbourne, Australia

The content analysis of these job offers focused on the transversal competencies most commonly
mentioned for the required functions. So, this analysis is based on formal indicators visible on the job
offers. This methodology allowed the identification, and subsequent analysis, of the elements that
employers consider important enough to be formally referred in job offers. In other words, it is considered
that employers are taking as a fact that there is a set of basic skills that is already covered by the IME
courses and, thus, they are giving emphasis to another set of competencies (transversal) with special
importance for performing the required function.
Figure 1 presents the demand for transversal competencies, identified in job offers for IME Engineers, and
demonstrates the importance of mastering a foreign language in the business context. The English
language, spoken and written, is required in many cases, and French, German and Spanish are less
referred languages. For the organizations, the need for this expertise is justified by the evolution of the
contexts and work situations [15], in which the challenges of globalization and competitiveness requires to
know how to (inter) act in a way that is focused on the client and on the market. However, in the context of
higher education, this competency is somehow undervalued. In other words future graduates do not
develop it in an intentional manner or do not have continuous training activities with this objective in mind.
The importance given to the field of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) also comes from
the requirements raised from the labour market, specifically due to the constant technological change and
to the need for more quick and effective information processing. Currently, most work situations require
the use of computers and the knowledge of specific tools available for particular functions (office, technical
software, internet, etc.).

20%

Foreign Languages; 241

18%

16%

ICT; 175

2007 + 2008

14%

12%

Teamwork; 131
10%

8%

6%

Interpersonal
Relationship; 78

Planning /
Organization;
130

Initiative / Dynamism; 78
Communication; 79

4%

Leadership; 87

2%

0%

%_2007
%_2008

FIGURE 1. Demand Analysis: job offers and transversal competencies

One of the most complex changes identified in the labour world is the multitude of interactions
(bothinternal and external) imposed by organizations. As suggested by Cabral-Cardoso, Estevo and

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Proceedings of the 2nd International Research Symposium on PBL, 3-4 December 2009, Melbourne, Australia

Silva [16], more and more, workers have to work as a team (with people with the same role, people with
different role, people from different hierarchic levels, customers, clients, etc.), in multicultural
environments. The importance of the teamwork competence is evident in Figure 1 and it is even more
emphasized if we compare it with with other competencies closely related to the practice of teamwork,
such as: communication, interpersonal relationship, negotiation and leadership. This array leads to
another concept of competency which encompasses both individual and collective dimensions, and it is
clearly valorised by the organizations [15].
To act with competence is crucial to act with others and with multiple resources. The higher this
articulation is more competent the individual becomes, in a context of shared responsibility. Teamwork is
a competence already addressed in several education levels, particularly in higher education. The
learning/teaching methodologies based on teamwork (e.g. PLE), besides the more evident promotion of
teamwork, also allow the acquisition of other competencies with relevant importance to the employers:
autonomy/responsibility, creativity, information gathering and processing, orientation for objectives and
results, planning/organization, critical thinking, knowledge integration and problem solving. If properly
developed, the cooperation between these transversal competencies allows an effective achievement of
the competence: knowing how to interact, being able to interact and being willing to interact. By
promoting thisarticulation, the education institutions are providing quality training to their students.
Based on this analysis, we may generically conclude that, except for the most valorised competence
(foreign languages), the ranking of the competencies represented in figure 1 is relative as the
correspondent values are not much different. Hence, the main emphasis of this analysis is to identify the
most important transversal competencies required by the organizations, allowing in this way the
universities to develop these competencies on their students.
Some of the conclusions of a study developed by Cabral-Cardoso, Estevo and Silva [16], about the
perspectives of employers and graduates in regard to the transversal competencies, reinforce the
valorisation of the most demanded competencies in the IME area. The study reports that for the
employers the most significant transversal competencies are: problem solving, information and
communication technologies, adaptability, teamwork, innovation/creativity, openness to learning,
interpersonal relationship, motivation and planning/organization. However, it is extremely important to
figure out if the graduates have indeed acquired the skills; there is a gap between the importance level
assigned to the competencies and the level attained by the graduates. The same study points out a
number of competencies where the gap between real and ideal is more accentuated, from the
employers point of view. If we compare this with figure 1, the following set of competencies should have
special attention: leadership, problem solving, planning/organization, autonomy/responsibility,
initiative/dynamism, adaptability, creativity and innovation/entrepreneurship. Thus, universities must focus
on these competencies in order to create conditions and mechanisms to ensure their development.
A special remark should be made regarding the competence foreign languages, which is not referred in
the aforementioned study. However, in our study that competence is one of the most important for the
employers.

4. TRANSVERSAL COMPETENCIES FACULTY STAFF PERSPECTIVE

The project is coordinated by a team of teachers and educational researchers, who has experience with
this project approach (PLE) over the last six years. This team is responsible for the Learning Guide, a
document which gathers all the information about the project: stakeholders, theme and goals,
competencies, semesters schedule, assessment and other resources, including the definition of the main
transversal competencies: (1) project management competencies ability to research, to make decisions,
to organize and to manage time; (2) teamwork competencies autonomy, initiative, responsibility,
leadership, solving problems, interpersonal relationship, motivation and conflict management, and; (3)
personal development competencies creativity, critical attitde, and self assessment.
In this regard, some questions arise: Who shloud define these competencies? Who should be more
deeply involved in this process? Why these competencies and not another ones? The coordination team
defines the competencies combining three different perspectives: the need for students to develop a

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specific competence; the needs of employers and the society in general, and; the experience, gained from
the process.
In order to identify faculty staff perceptions about the transversal competencies in PLE, six semiinterviews were conducted. From the analysis of the results a set of transversal competencies, which are
developed by students in the process, was identified.
There is one transversal competence here [Learning Guide] that I think we need to invest on,
that is project management ()teamwork, interpersonal relationship, management of conflicts,
and motivation, are competencies that we are already promoting.
(Teacher 1)
Those competencies subject to assessment, through formal presentations and reports, are
the most clearly identified. The others like leadership, responsibility and so on, are not so
visible.
(Teacher 5)
There are many competencies here that they [students] develop in the project even not being
aware of that
(Teacher 6)
Students dont give enough importance to [definition of transversal competencies]. Maybe we
need to involve them in this process from the beginning: These are the competencies that we
hope you will develop. What do you think? Should they be different?
(Teacher 4)
We promote the acquisition of some of these competencies [described in the Learning Guide]
during the process, but I think we should do that in a more effective way, clearly identifying the
competencies that we are working on and making students aware that they are achieving
them.
(Teacher 1)
Thus, it is difficult to clearly highlight the transversal competencies that are effectively acquired and
developed by students engaged in the PLE methodology. Nevertheless the importance of transversal
competencies in the engineer profile is unquestionable. From the data collected we can identify the most
visible competencies, in the faculty staff perspective: teamwork, oral and written communication and
interpersonal relationship. Two members of Faculty considered that one specific competence is extremely
important: project management. Particularly in the IME area, it is questioned if this competence is a
transversal competence or a technical competence. Additionally, the challenge here is for teachers and
students () to ensure that competences are both valid and reliable with ultimate aim being, in practice,
that they are fully transportable throughout and outside the institution [17].

5. CONCLUSIONS
The analysis of 254 job offers published in 2007 and 2008 for Industrial Management and Engineering
professionals make it possible to identify a large set of transversal competencies required by employers.
The demand for transversal competencies was mostly equivalent during these years, being the ability to
master a foreign language and to be able to deal with information and communication technologies the
two most required competencies. Other competencies can be described as project management
competencies, teamwork competencies and personal development competencies. It is clear, from the
demand analysis, that teamwork and project management competencies are the most valued ones by
employers. References to teamwork and planning / organization skills correspond to 9% of the total
competencies. Leadership and communication skills correspond to 6% of the total competencies. All other
competencies are below 6%. So, based on this sample, IME students would benefit from the application of
learning methodologies that create conditions for development of these competencies.
The PLE methodology [18] emphasizes the need for students to work in teams and to develop the ability
to solve problems that arises during the project activities. The IME learning projects initiatives in
interaction with industry organizations are based on open projects. Difficulties, problems, alternative
solutions and the interplay between these three aspects are unknown at the beginning of the project. In
order to deal with these, students should develop initiative and creativity, communication skills, and critical
thinking. Beyond these, it is important to workin large teams in a whole semester project, comply with a
set of specified milestones, and create adequate conditions to develop project management

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competencies. Faculty staff perceptions reinforced this perspective but raised some additional questions
regarding transversal competencies development: what is the level of development of transversal
competencies? Should transversal competencies be formally assessed? Are students aware of the
development of transversal competencies?
Faculty staff perceptions pointed to the need to link elements between IME project learning approach and
the industrial demand for transversal competencies. The level of development of transversal
competencies should be continuously evaluated based on faculty staff, students and employers
perceptions of IME graduates. This evaluation could give hints for future curriculum restructuring and also
for suggestions of application of specific learning methodologies.

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[16] Cabral-Cardoso, C., Estvo, C. & Silva, P. (2006), Competncias Transversais dos Diplomados do
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