Exploring the Correlation Between Systems Thinking and Soft Skills for Improved Effectiveness of Project Based Learning

This research to practice work-in-progress discusses how engineering educators continue to explore approaches that integrate different needed skillsets and knowledge bases in a holistic and efficient educational process. Experiential learning based on hands-on projects provides one of the most successful approaches in achieving this goal. Using an actual engineering project, a team of students can be guided to learn challenging skills and concepts. According to many literature reports, soft skills are best learned during practice, as an engineering project is carried out. System thinking is another example of a skill that is best learned while conducting an engineering project. Therefore, a hands-on project provides the best vehicle to achieve education of these two skillsets.Capitalizing on this knowledge, the study reported in this paper was set out to explore the correlation between soft skills and system thinking. The goal is to provide insight to educators that can help in designing better hands-on projects which integrate both skillsets holistically and efficiently. The fact that education of both skillsets uses the same vehicle of project based learning provided the motivation for this exploration. This exploratory study was conducted among a class of thirty high school students majoring in electronics and carrying out hardware-software combined projects. Students were asked to fill out two anonymous Likert-like questionnaires about their self-reported systems thinking and soft skills. The findings indicate a significant moderate positive correlation between the two skills, which may lead to both theoretical and educational implications. These results were employed in forming recommendations on integrating both system thinking and soft skills education in the set of activities carried out as part of accomplishing the technical project goals. Future work includes testing these recommended changes to finalize the formulation of an integrative approach to education that includes both of these skillsets.