ENGF0002 Design and Professional Skills 1

Module Overview

This is an introductory module for all engineering students. It aims to teach fundamental professional skills such as technical writing, critical thinking and decision making, research, ethics, teamwork, and project management along with a practical understanding of engineering design in the context of your chosen discipline. As such, the skills are taught from a technical discipline-focused, industrial perspective and the module is arranged into three main areas: communication, teamwork & project management, discipline-specific skills and projects.

To be successful engineers, our students need to be able to identify and analyse problems, conceive and design potential solutions, liaise with and present to clients, and work with and direct colleagues. They need to do these things efficiently, ethically, professionally, and competently, and, often, they need to do them quickly. Although it is possible to learn these skills ‘by osmosis’, this can take years—even decades—of trial and error.

Our goal is to provide students with tools at the start of their degrees that will make them more effective during their university career and, crucially, enable them to work as competent professionals not just when they graduate, but when they do projects and internships.

Topics Covered

• Technical Communications which can be broken down into writing, technical argument and explanation, visualisation as well as presentations.
• Teamwork and Project Management which includes concepts in effective leadership and industrial approaches to project work.
• Engineering Design which will show how the design cycle can be applied to engineering problems and what design projects actually look like for people working in a chosen engineering discipline.
• Discipline Specific Tools and Fundamental Skills which is aimed at giving students a first taste of the fundamentals for their chosen discipline.

Learning Outcomes

Upon completion of this module students will be able to:

• Think critically and behave professionally (Core Skills).
• Communicate technically through different media (Communication).
• Work efficiently and productively in teams (Teamwork and Project Management).
• Creatively apply the design cycle to real engineering projects (Engineering Design).
• Use design tools related to their discipline.