A Narrative Inquiry into Design-Based Learning Experiences, Transversal Skills, and Flourishing as Your Best-Loved Self

Abstract

As the workplace is calling for educators to develop the soft skills or transversal skills of students so they are better prepared, and research shows that developing those skills can improve academic achievement and overall well-being, there is still limited research on how to best develop those skills within the educational context. Particularly within the engineering field, industry leaders are demanding that students that leave their educational journey with skills in leadership, teamwork, communication, and critical thinking because they are all critical to the team-based and design-based nature of their jobs. This dissertation explores flipping the need to develop those skills in engineers to using engineering design-based learning experiences to develop those skills in students, as well as students’ perceptions on how learning those skills allows them to live at their best-loved self or human wellbeing.

The first article is a serial interpretation that explores what living as your best-loved self might entail. The second article is a narrative-based case study of Tier one university students learning transversal skills and their perception of transversal skills in design-based learning experiences. The third article is an in-depth look at four engineering students’ journey in an engineering leadership course and the impact it had on them living as their best-loved self. The fourth article looks at the metaphor of ‘team as family’ and how the rose-colored image it portrays does not always align with the lived experience on the team.