Enhancing communication skills through student and enterprise interaction

Abstract

Collaboration between a university and an industry is a common way to create “realistic” student projects that provide opportunities for gaining useful knowledge of “real-world problems,” skill development, and project management. To use university-industry collaboration as a way of teaching communication is not new. However, most courses using this approach focus mainly on written and verbal communication. A case study of a second year bachelor’s level product design course, which focused on project-based learning as a pedagogical platform, was used as the primary research method. This research aimed to conduct further inquiry into how external collaboration can contribute to more holistic communicative learning. The findings indicated that this approach leads students to a more holistic communicative understanding. Furthermore, using student-driven processes resulted in better communicative insight than teacher-driven processes. The processes did not necessarily lead to increased semantic awareness; however, the course created an arena where students could adjust their semantic perceptions. Both student- and teacher-driven processes created engaged students and the possibility to build individual strength in students through conquering fears and attaining the satisfaction of achievement. However, there were some cases of students not handling the pressure of delivery