Mixed Groups as a Way to Teach Meta-Skills to Engineering Students

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to describe an example of teaching so-called meta-skills in Häme University of Applied Sciences Electrical and Automation Engineering study programme. The method has been conducted twice, in 2018 and 2019. Both times the first-year students were given a development project in which they studied the basics of programming. More important than programming was to learn meta-skills: teamwork skills, language and communication skills, IT skills, problem-solving skills, and skills to apply knowledge to practice and acting in a multicultural environment. The feedback was gathered after the implementations by the questionnaire. The results show that students think this kind of pedagogical method improves their previously described meta-skills. For teachers this means working more as a supervisor than a source of knowledge. In addition to meta-skills, the method increases interaction between students of different cultural and educational backgrounds. The method works as means of internationalization for Finnish-speaking students. For foreign students, the method is one way of increasing interaction with Finnish-speaking students and can act as a part of the integration process to Finnish society.