Transferable Skills

The BSc program in Geospatial Engineering (Raumbezogene Ingenieurwissenschaften) not only teaches students the domain specific basics of this area, but also specifically promotes their transferable skills. Argumentation, technical and scientific writing, visualisation, presentation, critical thinking, learning management, teamwork and project management have been implemented in the curriculum since the autumn semester 2019. In addition, the competences in the areas of problem solving and design, mathematical modelling and model validation, quantitative analyses with large data volumes and programming are being promoted.

To implement this, an initiative "Capacity Building Across Individual Courses" was started in 2017. It was supported by the "Innovedum" funding format for innovative teaching at ETH Zurich. The aim of the initiative was to continuously strengthen the transferable competencies of students throughout the curriculum by making transferable skills explicit within existing courses and providing material for both students and lecturers.

Learning objectives were defined for each competence in exchange with the lecturers. They build on one another and are sustainably strengthened in various courses. The newly designed learning objectives were assigned to the courses of the BSc program based on interest, availabilities and capacities of the respective lecturers. For support in class, assessments and for independent consolidation, handouts and worksheets were developed and compiled for students and lecturers. Kick off and test run was the "base year project work" starting in the spring semester 2019 where the first teaching materials have been tested. Afterwards feedback from students and lecturers was included to improve the material.

A core success factor of the initiative was also the implementation of Brown Bag meetings as an opportunity for all lecturers within the program to meet informally, exchange experiences from their teaching, get and provide input, and synchronize teaching activities.