**3. Research methodology**

To achieve the objectives of the study described in this chapter, two research instruments were used. Instrument 1 consisted in a questionnaire on the development of social skills, targeting IEM first-year students of the last PBL edition of the Industrial Engineering and Management (PBL-IEM1) program, at University of Minho, Portugal. This was aimed at uncovering the social skills that are developed and exercised in PBL, along with a reflection on its importance for future professional proficiency. Instrument 2 consisted in interviews on the perceived importance of early experiences in PBL for the development of social Skills, targeting a group of young Industrial Engineers currently working in a number of companies. These instruments enable the gathering of different perspectives from different stages of professional development, and the use of multiple research approaches and data types, that is, a quantitative analysis grounded on the questionnaire applied to the PBL-IEM1 students, and a qualitative analysis grounded on the interviews (via email) to IEM recently graduated engineers.

The questionnaire used on instrument 1 is part of a larger annual questionnaire on evaluation of the PBL methodology. Three sections were considered to directly relate to social skills development, which encompassed a total of 25 questions, which were evaluated based on


**Table 1.** PBL questionnaire: social skills development.

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.

To achieve the objectives of the study described in this chapter, two research instruments were used. Instrument 1 consisted in a questionnaire on the development of social skills, targeting IEM first-year students of the last PBL edition of the Industrial Engineering and Management (PBL-IEM1) program, at University of Minho, Portugal. This was aimed at uncovering the social skills that are developed and exercised in PBL, along with a reflection on its importance for future professional proficiency. Instrument 2 consisted in interviews on the perceived importance of early experiences in PBL for the development of social Skills, targeting a group of young Industrial Engineers currently working in a number of companies. These instruments enable the gathering of different perspectives from different stages of professional development, and the use of multiple research approaches and data types, that is, a quantitative analysis grounded on the questionnaire applied to the PBL-IEM1 students, and a qualitative analysis grounded on the interviews (via email) to IEM recently graduated engineers.

The questionnaire used on instrument 1 is part of a larger annual questionnaire on evaluation of the PBL methodology. Three sections were considered to directly relate to social skills development, which encompassed a total of 25 questions, which were evaluated based on

**3. Research methodology**

12 Human Capital and Competences in Project Management


**Table 2.** Characterization of the interview respondents (young industrial engineers).

5-point Likert-type scale. The students had to indicate the degree of agreement to each question/sentence (where "1" corresponds to "strongly disagree" and "5" to "totally agree"). The questionnaire was made available online, for 2 weeks, after the end of the semester. From the 48 enrolled students, 32 accepted the challenge and answered the questionnaire. The 25 closed questions and the corresponding sections are depicted in **Table 1**.

Regarding the young engineers' opinion on the effects of the PBL methodology on the development of social skills, three main questions were raised and answered by e-mail:


• In the exercise of your professional activity did you feel that you were able to more easily overcome difficulties (or not) due to your knowledge acquired with PBL? Identify some of the difficulties encountered?

Six young engineers and four trainees voluntarily accepted to answer the questions. The sample was defined for convenience purposes, namely easiness and speedy gathering of the information. Concerning the work experience, four of them are having their first experience in an internship program (trainee) in a company, and the remaining ones from 2 to 8 years of work experience. Most respondents were integrated in multidisciplinary teams, with small and medium dimensions, and some of them were in a leading position (three). Two of the interviewees are, currently, working abroad in international company. **Table 2** characterizes the respondents' profile, company type, IEM first year of academic years (edition) attended and number of years of work experience, type of work and if they lead a team and how many workers they lead or work with.

A quantitative analysis of the results on the questionnaire and a qualitative analysis of the answers to the interviews will be explored in more detail using context analysis in Sections 5.1 and 5.2, respectively.
