Contribution of Project-Based Learning on Social Skills Development

Abstract

The scope of this chapter is to describe and share experiences of two industrial engineers that had practiced project-based learning (PBL) during their engineering degree. Currently, authors look backward with a different perspective related to PBL as they are working as industrial engineers in different areas for 10 years in a multinational environment. Such experiences provide to the students the opportunity of developing soft skills that would be difficult to obtain following a traditional expositive lecture, more focused on individual work. Several challenges and advantages of learning by doing with PBL prepare students and contribute for their professional life because this kind of learning is closer to the professional daily life. In this chapter, four main experiences faced by the authors as engineering students are reported. Furthermore, the importance of experience like that and its contribution for the professional life is explained from the authors' point of view.