**2. Literature review**

organized in the future will enable the release of workers doing routine tasks, appealing to their skills for more creative and value-added activities. Additionally, they will be called to develop more complex products and systems and to manage them efficiently through new methods, tools and technologies [e.g., by using, among others, augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), cyber-physical systems (CPS)] and to use transdisciplinary perspectives [2].

Work organization and design changes will imply a total new role of workers, increasing their responsibility and enhancing their personal development. According to the report of the American Management Association [3], the skills to deal with the fast pace of change in businesses are beyond the traditional "Three Rs" of reading, writing and arithmetic to a new set of skills, the "Four Cs": Critical thinking, Communication, Collaboration and Creativity, to enable workers to think criti-

The changes described require a new thinking about the way prospective workers are trained. This implies modifications in teaching institutions and pedagogical approaches. These modifications must educate the future workers to have more initiative, to possess excellent communication skills and the ability to organize their own work, as recommended by the reports referred above [1, 3] and others [4]. These needed skills fit in the set of the called Social Skills that according to the Business dictionary is the *"Ability to communicate, persuade, and interact with other members of the society, without undue conflict or disharmony"* [5]. Other definitions found are aligned with the one presented above, such as the definition of the Collins dictionary that

Active learning methodologies are particularly advocated, such as project-based learning (PBL), as methodologies capable of providing such skills [7–9]. Project-based learning is an active learning methodology that engages the students on their own learning, and puts them at the heart of competence development, including technical and transversal ones, like social skills. Indeed, PBL requires that team members ultimately bond with their peers in a student-centered approach, aiming at the development of technical proficiency in a number of subjects, for proposing a meaningful solution for an open-ended challenge. This prolific process requires that team members abandon their passive attitude toward learning and allows them to systematically exercise a number of distinct settings, which enrich their learning experiences. These are key in engineering programs where students are ought to develop competences for future practice, such as solving real-life problems, making convincing arguments (oral and written), leading teams, managing conflicts, working effectively within teams, considering social and environmental issues, interacting with others (e.g., colleagues, partners, clients) and being proactive and innovative.

This chapter discusses the PBL implemented in the Industrial Engineering and Management (IEM) program of first year since 2004–2005 as an effective tool to promote the defined social skills in the freshman. The instruments used to evidence this were the PBL process assessment survey applied in the end of semester to the first-year students and some interviews with the

This chapter is divided into six sections. After the introduction, a brief literature review about PBL and skills is presented in Section 2. The research methodology is introduced in Section 3. Section 4 presents the context study describing the most important aspects of PBL. Section 5 points out the results and main findings and, finally, last section outlines some conclusions.

graduates PBL participants.

cally, solve problems, innovate, collaborate and communicate more effectively.

10 Human Capital and Competences in Project Management

states: *"the skills that are necessary in order to communicate and interact with others"* [6].

According to Schmier [10], teaching is a sacred trust, a heavy responsibility, a privilege not to be taken lightly, a noble mission, a profound opportunity and making in life. This could not be more true when it is taken seriously, and in order to happen, it is necessary to be prepared to teach. This means recognizance and having present powerful ideas in teaching, as introduced by Gibbs and Habeshaw [11]: (1) students construct knowledge; (2) students need to see the whole picture; (3) students are selectively negligent; (4) students are driven by assessment; (5) students often only memorize; (6) students' attention is limited; (7) students can easily be overburdened; (8) adults learn differently; (9) students learn well by doing; (10) students learn well when they take responsibility for their learning and, finally, (11) students have feelings.

How to put in practice such ideas and implement teaching in effective learning? Active learning seems to be the solution. Active learning is defined by Bonwell and Eison [7] as instructional activities involving students in doing things and thinking about what they are doing. These activities are capable of creating excitement in the classroom at such a point that learning would be natural. Active learning activities should be capable to provide six levels of Bloom taxonomy: (1) knowledge, (2) comprehension, (3) application, (4) analysis, (5) synthesis and (6) evaluation and this same, revised [12]. Another taxonomy to be covered by active learning methodologies is Fink's taxonomy levels [13] of significant learning. Fink's view levels are as follows: foundational knowledge, application, integration, human dimensions, caring and learning how to learn. These authors referred that Bloom six-level taxonomy is no longer enough to the transformational learning practice.

Comparing these taxonomies, all are important in education, but, particularly, the last three from Fink' taxonomy, are, maybe, the most fundamental levels in an engineer training. In addition to these, engineer training demanded an holistic development of knowledge (head), dispositions (heart) and application (hands) and competency development of sustainability, systems and ethics provided by a Lean Engineering Education, as advocated by Flumerfelt et al. [14]. Such themes are not easy to teach/learn demanding active learning but also collaborative and cooperative approaches where the students become the center of their own learning. According to Prince [15], collaborative approaches can refer to any instructional method in which students work together in small groups toward a common goal, and cooperative as a structured form of workgroup where students pursue common goals while being assessed individually.

Project-based learning is an active learning methodology that involves collaborative and cooperative approaches. This could have different roots and different moments of interest and renaissance [16]. Nevertheless, it seems that the history of project method was systematically attached to the works of Dewey [17] and Kilpatrick [18, 19]. Both authors agree on the suitability of this method to prepare autonomous, independent and responsible citizens for their active practice social and democratic modes of behavior. These values are learned by the students while constructing the path to their own knowledge, combining theory with practice in a meaningful environment and a purposeful education. Some universities and colleges, such as the Aalborg University in Denmark, are converted to the project method adopting an approach of project (project-based learning) that could go from a single project in a course, the Task project, to a problem project [9].

In an engineering environment, some authors, for example, Powel and Weenk [20], named PBL as Project-Led Engineering Education (PLEE) and defined it as *"Project-led engineering education focuses on team-based student activity relating to learning and to solving large-scale open-ended projects. Each project is usually supported by several theory-based lecture courses linked by a theme that labels the curriculum unit. A team of students tackles the project, provides a solution, and delivers by an agreed delivery time (a deadline) a 'team product', such as a prototype and a team report. Students show what they have learned by discussing with staff the 'team product' and reflecting on how they achieved it."*

By doing such projects, students develop technical competences and transversal (or transferable) competences. Among these are the social skills, referred above, that in essence are related to the ability, as individual, to engage effectively with others. It is this that defines a person in terms of how he/she establishes healthy relations with others. When this happens, there are conditions for the knowledge sharing and growth. An intelligent individual only is recognizable as such if he/she has its recognition by the peers. So, social skills are utmost the trigger for establishing a network of persons and to deal with the transdisciplinary complex systems created [21] by the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The National Academy of Science and Engineering report [1], previously referred, is clear about the training needs of workforce in managing complexity, abstraction and problem-solving. It is expected that they are able to act much more on their own initiative and to possess excellent communication skills and the ability to organize their own work, putting greater demands on employees' subjective skills and potential. Previous reports such as the ones from American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and Royal Academy of Engineering [22, 23] alerted also to these needs. At the same time, new opportunities in terms of qualitative enrichment of their work, a more interesting working environment, greater autonomy and more opportunities for self-development will be provided.
