Poster Preparation and Presentation on Reading Club Activity: A case study to enhance Communication skills of Engineering students

Abstract

Engineering education has undergone a significant transformation from traditional teacher-centered to studentcentered classroom. Engineering education is mostly emphasizing technical courses. Due to globalization need to develop the soft skills of engineering students is increasing day by day as an industry requirement. Soft skills, a set of transferable skills play a vital role in the personal, academic, and professional development of engineering students. Effective Communication skills particularly in English is one of the global demanding soft skills for engineering students. Listening, speaking, reading, & writing (LSRW) are the foundation skills for effective communication skills in English. The present paper is an attempt to motivate students toward reading skills. The paper examines how reading non-technical books under reading club activity and developing and presenting posters on the same leads to enhance communication skills with the personal and professional development of engineering students. This Poster Preparation and Presentation on Reading Club Activity (RC & 3P approach) explores the relationship between soft skills and English proficiency from an engineering student’s perspective. The authors have implemented this activity in the S. Y. B. Tech class for Personal Effectiveness and Body Language (PEBL) course. The proposed approach was implemented on 70 students of interdisciplinary branches and qualitative and quantitative assessment techniques were used to evaluate the outcomes and compare with the control group. The pedagogical implications based on the collected data and analysis were discussed. The researchers further explored from the findings that the selected approach reflected better communication skills, interpersonal skills, teamwork, time management, stress management, creative thinking, and presentation skills.