STIC - Engineering:
The Labour Market
 "Employability
Skills"
ACTIVITY: Lecture, followed by Team Skills Group Activity
and Pair Interviews.
TIME: 1 hour
LEARNING OUTCOME: Participants will understand the
three categories of general skills in demand in the Canadian labour force
and will have practised working as a team.
DESCRIPTION:
- Place the Employability Skills Profile on the overhead
(Overhead 3
 ,
Participant Workbook page 23 ).
- Explain to participants that while specific skills are
needed for specific jobs, these are the skills that are deemed to
be highly valued by most Canadian employers.
- Go through the Employability Skills Profile with them.
Explain that there are three categories: Academic Skills, Personal
Management Skills and Teamwork Skills.
- Explain that teamwork skills are considered very important
yet are often the most difficult to acquire and articulate.
- Ask participants to think about the qualities they believe
a person must possess to be an effective team member. Give them three
minutes to list these qualities on page 21 of
their workbooks.
- Each person then ranks the items on his/her list according
to the perceived importance of each quality (with 1 representing
the most important quality of an effective team member).
- When the participants have finished their rankings,
divide them into four groups.
- The members of each group share their lists and the
rationales for their selections and then attempt to reach consensus
on the five most important qualities of an effective team member. If
consensus cannot be reached within ten minutes, the group members may
vote to determine the group's list of qualities.
- A volunteer from each group reports on the group's top
five qualities. Facilitator records on flip chart.
- Debrief: Can they identify anyone in their group
who:
- took on a leadership role?
- said something that helped the group make a decision?
- expressed his/her opinion clearly and confidently?
- acted in a positive, constructive manner?
- asked someone else for his/her opinion?
- praised someone?
- Place Overhead 4 -
Characteristics of Effective Team Members - on
the projector. Are the traits they chose on the list?
- Organize participants into pairs for a role-playing
exercise. Instruct participants to choose an interviewer and an interviewee.
The interviewer should use the list of questions on page 22 of
their workbooks. Explain that the person who is responding should
try to use some of the characteristics of an effective team member
that we have just identified in their responses - while remaining honest
about their own skills. Instruct participants to reverse roles.
- Debrief:
- Was everyone able to describe at least
one situation in which they worked effectively as a member of a
team?
- Did knowing the characteristics of effective team members
help them to describe their role in a team situation?
- Why are teamwork skills so important in engineering?
 Downloads
All downloads are in Adobe Acrobat PDF.
Download a print version of the above lesson plan and related handouts
and overheads.
"Employability
Skills" [160
KB, 6 pages]
- Lesson Plan
- Participant Workbook pages 21 - 22
Download the complete Facilitator's Guide and Participant's Workbook.
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