Engineering design solutions for community needs: enhancing undergraduates’ workplace related skills through service-learning

Abstract

Service-Learning (SL) is a powerful educational tool that exposes students to the world of practice through well-structured opportunities for learning by doing. When SL subjects are developed for targeted students from selected disciplines, they can be used to enhance students’ discipline specific skills. This paper presents the outcome from such an attempt to modify an open-to-all engineering-based SL subject to discipline specific SL subject. The key stages of preparation, execution and assessment of the SL subject have been modified to enhance students’ workplace related skills. The results of the questionnaire survey and the reflective writings done by the students reveal that, when carefully designed, SL subjects can effectively be used to enhance students’ workplace related skills. The challenges faced and strategies for sustainability are also discussed.