Providing Professional Skills to Telecommunication Engineers through a Novel Vertical Approach

The new context of the European Space of Higher Education and the current social environment marked by new technologies implies that new Telecommunication Engineers must be trained not only in technical knowledge but also in the professional skills that they must use in their professional lives. Some learning methodologies, such as Project-Based Learning help develop these skills. This paper presents projects developed in order to teach and assess different skills. The methods used change depending on the year of the academic program. The projects have been designed to focus on "process skills'': The ability to work in a multi-disciplinary team, understanding of both professional and ethical responsibility and the ability to communicate effectively. The projects have been assessed through multi-source feedback combined with the use of rubrics to facilitate the evaluation. According to the results, most of the objectives have been achieved. Student satisfaction is very high, as the survey results demonstrate.