SOCIAL SKILLS AND MORAL VALUES IN ENGINEERING EDUCATION

Abstract

All technical degrees in the Spanish Higher Educational System include a Final or Honors Project required to obtain the diploma. Its syllabus includes the realization of a technical project, which should lead the student to put into practice most of the skills acquired along the whole degree. Only technical skills are usually considered, although recent studies have proved that further capabilities, such as those included in the category of “social skills”, are required from the students by their prospective employers. Moreover, the introduction of the European Higher Educational System, strongly emphasizes the importance of this sort of capabilities. What we present in this work is a way to include both social skills and moral values in the Honors Project without any loss of its technical character. It is done by means of the development of technical aids to improve the welfare of disabled people. Collaboration agreements with nonprofit institutions and charities give us access to the needs of these communities and the opportunity to apply the results of the projects. A procedure to manage projects of this kind is also presented.