Enabling Key Competencies by Educational Project Work Exemplified by Teamwork and Cooperation

Companies demand academic graduates with much more than only professional competence. Methodological skills, social competence or creativity are just some keywords that are mentioned often. Many years academic education concentrated on teaching professional skills, but in changing business environments with increased competition, shorter time-to-market, higher quality demands and high cost sensitivity, graduates have to face novel work contexts, e.g. working in interdisciplinary project teams. The Karlsruhe Education Model for Product Development (KaLeP) addresses competence development beyond pure professional skills. This contribution briefly presents the KaLeP approach and gives deeper insight to the project work of the integrated product development course being a case study. Further on the authors discuss how students can develop key competencies in a realistic project environment. Two examples are teamwork and cooperation support. The contribution points out, how those competencies can be addressed and improved during a four-month project task.