Implementing IT in engineering education

Abstract

Nowadays in the multicultural workplace engineers need both hard skills and soft skills. They need to be good communicators, as they need to collaborate with others, convince their opponents when negotiating in order to gain benefit for a company and society. Students engineers could have difficulty in achieving success in the future professional field, as their communication skills, the most beneficial skills in the 21st century, are not being developed properly as hard skills development is a priority during the engineering education. In the modern world Information Technologies play an important role in education, including teaching and learning due to their didactic potential. They provide an opportunity to differentiate instruction and change classrooms into dynamic learning environments. The aim of research was to elaborate a technique for developing engineering students’ communication skills through radio podcasts. Research methods included a literature review, analysis and synthesis, experimental work, assessment of the development level of engineering students’ communication skills, analysis of the data obtained. As a result, a teaching technique was elaborated for the development of engineering students’ communication skills through radio podcasts that includes (1) organizing students’ individual, team and group work on podcasts; (2) filling a portfolio with analysis of the podcasts; (3) role-playing podcasts using the revealed speech and non-speech features; (4) creating own podcasts, focused on a specific thematic content. Experimental work was held in 2022 and 2023 at Higher Engineering School, Industrial university of Tyumen, Tyumen, Russia. It investigated the effectiveness of using the technique for developing communication skills through radio podcasts among engineering students. The results of pre-test and post-test confirmed the positive dynamics of the development of communication skills through radio podcasts among engineering students of the experimental group. The prospects for further research is that the technique presented in research can be employed in communication skills development among university students of different majors, and can complement engineering education.