A significant number of engineers move into management positions, their numbers increasing with their length of service. However, engineers are not considered to be effective managers and are generally considered inadequate in soft skills. Given the centrality of engineers and management, understanding this transition is essential in order to develop strategies for managing. This research is an exploratory field-based study of the transition of professional engineers into management roles (engineer-managers) in Australia, from the perspective of the individual engineer. The study investigates the attitudes of engineers towards such areas as engineering education, towards managerial transition, status, organizational support systems, and strategies for managing transition, and examines their influence on the process of transition. Importantly, this research examines the influence of factors such as job nature, management qualifications, age, employing organizations, and other variables on their attitudes, and studies the differences between various subgroups of engineers. This research is based on the results of a case study and a questionnaire survey. An important outcome of this research is the focus on the process of engineering education. This research concludes that different emphases in the process of teaching and learning would contribute, in the long run, to engineers developing soft skills, and so make their transition into management easier. The study found that electrical engineers are more proactive than civil or mechanical engineers and that it is necessary to develop different strategies for different groups of engineers. The study observed that the higher the status of professional engineers within an organization, the greater was the likelihood of success. Supporting the anecdotal evidence from the case study, it is noted that the more engineers there are in management positions, the better the perception of senior management about their capabilities. This study found that management education for engineers has a strong influence, both in terms of their acquiring managerial skills as well as enhancing their status within their organization. Experiential learning, though, is the most common method by which engineers acquire managerial skills. The study also found that this is the least-managed strategy in Australian organizations; learning is left entirely to the individual. For engineers to be able to take advantage of experiential learning, better management is necessary / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Nach erfolgreicher Antragstellung wurde zum 1. Juli 2010 die Kompetenzschule ELSYS (Employability and Leadership Skills for Young Saxon Researchers) an der Research Academy Leipzig eingerichtet. Die Finanzierung der Kompetenzschule erfolgte zu 100 Prozent aus Mitteln des Europäischen Sozialfonds (ESF) gemäß der Richtlinie ESF Hochschule und Forschung des Sächsischen Staatsministeriums für Wissenschaft und Kunst (SMWK). Hierbei sollte das Ziel einer nachhaltigen Verstetigung des Projekts an der Universität verfolgt werden. Die Mittelzuweisung und Ausgabenprüfung gemäß der Förderrichtlinie erfolgten durch die Sächsische Aufbaubank (SAB). Der Bericht umfasst die Aktivitäten und Ergebnisse des ersten Förderzeitraumes vom 1. Juli 2010 bis zum 30. Juni 2013. Es wird dargestellt, wie die Lern- und Weiterbildungsinhalte und -strategien der Kompetenzschule dazu beigetragen haben, ein umfangreiches Angebot für den Erwerb von (überfachlichen) Handlungskompetenzen für Promovierende und Postdocs nachhaltig zu entwickeln. Ergebnisse und Alleinstellungsmerkmale werden anhand des Konzepts und der Struktur der Kompetenzschule ELSYS herausgearbeitet und bewertet. Ein Konzept für den Förderzeitraum bis 2014 und darüber hinausreichende Entwicklungsstrategien werden skizziert.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2009. / Title from first page of PDF file. Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 242-257).

The diploma thesis is focused on the cultural patterns and motives the Czech and Belgian students are influenced by when selecting a country for their Erasmus+ exchange study programme. Further, a development of students' soft skills after the exchange programme as well as their attitude to further international mobility is analyzed. After a realisation of primary and secondary research, a relationship was revealed between the individualism dimension of selected countries and students' home country, confirming the hypothesis that the Czech and Belgian students choose more individualistic countries. Further, there was proven a positive correlation in terms of the development of a student's skills. Also, the students tend to be more mobile within Europe as well as worldwide. In the end, the benefits of Erasmus+ exchange study programme are discussed and suggestions aimed to the representatives of department of the foreign affairs proposed.

Soft skills are characteristics associated with an individual’s personality. They are relevant to professional qualification because they improve the performance at work. Since they are important, Information Technology companies need to understand the soft skills to each role in software development process. Additionally, during the hiring process these companies need to identify soft skills in candidates to find out which one of them have the required characteristics to fit the available jobs. However, soft skills identification is a hard task because it takes time to know an individual’s behavior and normally uses interviews or recommendations. Therefore, we notice a lack of automatic approaches in this context. This dissertation proposes a strategy to minimize the problem of soft skills identification. The strategy focus on the role of software programmers and it aims to find ways to automatically identify soft skills of individuals in this role. To do so, we propose a set of metrics that evaluate soft skills. We collect the metrics from an online judge system, according to its users’ performance and activities. To evaluate the metrics, we conduct an empirical study regarding 56 students of programming courses. Our results indicate that the metrics to identify Analytical and solving problems skills, Attention to details, Fast learning and Persistence are satisfactory. On the other hand, Communication and Work independently skills did not reach significant results. / Soft skills são características associadas a personalidade de um indivíduo. Consideradas relevantes para compor o perfil de um profissional qualificado, elas melhoram o desempenho no trabalho. Diante de sua importância, empresas de Tecnologia da Informação precisam entender quais soft skills são necessárias para cada papel no processo de desenvolvimento de software. Além disso, durante o processo de contratação, essas empresas precisam identificar soft skills em candidatos a fim de descobrir quais deles possuem as características exigidas para os cargos disponíveis. No entanto, a identificação de soft skills é uma tarefa difícil, pois exige conhecer um indivíduo e seu comportamento por um tempo. Normalmente também requer esforços como entrevistas e recomendações, tendo sido observada a falta de abordagens automáticas nesse contexto. Esta dissertação propõe uma estratégia para minimizar o problema da identificação de soft skills. Tal estratégia foca no papel do programador de software e tem como objetivo encontrar formas para identificar automaticamente soft skills de indivíduos nesse papel. Para isso, propomos um conjunto de métricas que pontuam soft skills. Coletamos essas métricas a partir de um juiz online, de acordo com o desempenho e atividades de usuários no sistema. Para avaliar as métricas propostas, conduzimos um estudo empírico envolvendo 56 estudantes de cursos de programação. Nossos resultados indicam que as métricas para identificar as soft skills Análise e resolução de problemas, Atenção a detalhes, Aprendizagem rápida e Persistência são satisfatórias. Por outro lado, as métricas relativas às soft skills de Comunicação e Trabalho independente não alcançaram resultados significativos.

O presente estudo se propõe a examinar a associação entre exposição à violência e as habilidades socioemocionais de alunos do ensino médio da rede pública do estado do Rio de Janeiro, dada a hipótese de que essas últimas funcionariam como mediadoras de parte do efeito da violência sobre desempenho escolar. A base de dados utilizada foi concebida pelo Instituto Ayrton Senna e a OCDE, que elaboraram uma ferramenta para a mensuração das habilidades socioemocionais desses estudantes. A relação foi estudada para alunos do 1o e 3o anos do ensino médio. Conclui-se que as habilidades socioemocionais mais associadas à criminalidade são amabilidade, extroversão e abertura a novas experiências, cujas relações demonstraram coeficientes negativos. A categoria de crimes que mais apresentou relação com as características analisadas foi a de crimes violentos contra patrimônio. Amabilidade e abertura a novas experiências se revelaram como mediadoras de uma pequena parcela do efeito da violência sobre as proficiências de matemática e língua portuguesa / This study aims to explore the association between exposure to violence and public school student\'s soft skills, given the hypothesis that these latter ones would be mediators of the effect of violence over scholar performance. The data base utilized was developed by the Ayrton Senna Institute and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and aimed to elaborate a tool for measuring soft skills of aproximatly 25 thousand students of Rio de Janeiro state public schools. The relation was analyzed for students in the first and last year of high school. The soft skills most associated with the violence indicators used were agreeableness, extraversion and openness to experience, with negative coeficients. The crimes that showed stronger relations with these characteristics were crimes against property. Agreeableness and openness to experience revealed themselves as mediators of the effect of violence over math and portuguese language grades

Magister Educationis (Adult Learning and Global Change) - MEd(AL) / Scholars argue within a human capital perspective that generic employability skills such as critical thinking, computer literacy, independent thinking, problem solving, communication skills must be included in human capital development. Employers are demanding that education and training institutions enable students to develop generic employability skills so that they can be 'work ready' for employment in the 'new knowledge economy'. As a consequence, the implementation of generic employability skills programmes can be found in Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) colleges worldwide. Framed within a human capital perspective, this research paper focuses on an investigation into the extent to which the National Certificate (Vocational) Life Skills course, offered at a TVET college in the Western Cape, enables students to develop the required generic employability skills of communication, problem solving, teamwork, leadership and critical thinking. Findings reveal that the NCV Life Skills course was both successful and unsuccessful in enabling participants to develop generic skills which make them 'ready for work'.

This thesis is focused on a new approach of education called blended learning. The history and developement of Blended Learning is described in the first part. Then the methods and tools of Blended Learning are evaluated and compared to the traditional methods of education. At the final part an efficient developement of the educational programs is emphasized.

The purpose of this Master thesis was to analyze the current state of stimulation of workers in company providing services of catering and subsequently propose measures for improvement. Due to characteristics of provided services is obvious that the company's success on the market is based on how its employees take their work. The proposed measures are designed for a particular company so it should be usable in real operating process. In this work were presented another possibile ways to influence and impact on work performance and have a clear picture of the desired working behavior of employees and the management, which should be examined by company as close as possible.

The purpose of this study was to explore the alignment of soft skills sought by current business IS entry-level employers in electronic job postings, with the integration of soft skills in undergraduate business information systems (IS) syllabi of public four-year universities in Texas. One hundred fifty job postings were extracted from two major electronic career databases. Ten undergraduate AACSB-accredited programs in the field of business information systems (IS) were investigated, and syllabi for the 70 major courses of the business IS programs were obtained for review. Content analysis was applied to all job postings and syllabi, exposing all soft skills related to the 9 categories used in this study adapted from the 21st Century Framework for Learning (Partnership for 21st Century Learning, 2009). Frequencies were tabulated to determine rank of soft skills in job postings and syllabi, and Jaccard’s coefficient statistic of occurrence was used for cluster analysis. Soft skills within all 9 categories were found in job postings (n = 1554) and course syllabi (n = 774). Three soft skill categories were aligned between job postings and syllabi: (1) initiative and self-direction, (2) social and cross-cultural skills, and (3) flexibility and adaptability. However, because differences in the higher ranked frequencies of soft skills in job postings and syllabi were noted, the null hypothesis of this study was rejected.