Teaching professional practice and career development to graduate students

Abstract

A one-year master of engineering program in telecommunications and information security was recently introduced at the University of Victoria, Canada. In addition to nine technical courses, students are required to take two non-technical courses to improve their soft skills and to develop their professional career. This paper describes the motivation and design of these courses, and experiences gained and lessons learnt in delivering the courses. Improvements to be made based on student feedbacks and instructor observations are discussed.