Soft skills for the development of social and sustainable projects in industrial engineering students

The industrial engineering program at Universidad El Bosque in Colombia, is an undergraduate program with high-quality accreditation from 2020. The Social Practice course, as a required course of seventh academic semester that seeks develop projects with social impact oriented by the SDGs. To improve the engagement of the students, this research analyzes how do they rate their current proficiency in a range of soft skills developed in Social Practice course, and how do they perceive its importance in industrial engineering. The participants were asked to self-evaluate their current proficiency in 20 soft skills designed by different studies in engineering education. The survey recognizes the importance of acquiring these soft skills to promote professional development, especially the skills of teamwork, argumentation, and meeting deadlines. The sustainability component requires a focus on SDG 14 and SDG 2, because the students projects do not relate those SDGs as topics. This preliminary information makes it possible to strengthen the industrial engineering curricula and to develop strategic plans around those soft skills.