In Search of a More Balanced Engineering Curriculum: The Perspective of Students, Teachers, Alumni and Employers

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

A brief summary

The paper proposes specific strategies and curriculum solutions for developing comprehensive and necessary competencies of graduate students.

The main contribution is an example of solving the perceived problem with the introduction of the 'Transferable Skills' discipline to develop a set of knowledge and skills that, while not part of the specific competencies of each of the engineering disciplines, represent generic hard skills, as well as soft skills that are considered relevant to professional practice.

The strengths of this article are highlighted principles that can help prepare students for competent access to the labour market, highlighted according to the opinion of students, former students, teachers and employers in curriculum design.

General concept comments

The sample needs to be described more clearly (including the sample type and the sample ratio to the entire population of individual categories of respondents). It is also necessary to explain the differences in the number of respondents for each category, given that the research covered two very different Polytechnic Institutes. Despite this, the requirements regarding the necessary changes in the engineering education area are correct and in line with the modern education requirements at the higher education level. What is missing is a deeper insight into the achieved results and a concrete analysis with systematized responses from the respondents that would lead to conclusions that are now highlighted only based on a few presented excerpts of individual opinions. Better literary support in the discussion would significantly improve the value of the paper.

Specific comments

2 – 4 It is unusual to write the title of an article in the form of sentences.

18 It should be avoided that parts of the title are repeated as keywords, so please adapt them. Probably instead of "soft kills" it should be "soft skills".

129 - 145 It is necessary to explain the differences in the number of respondents for each category, given that the research covered two very different Polytechnic Institutes.

171 – 221 It is necessary to describe in more detail the common considerations and differences between the analyzed categories of respondents and the extremely different professions involved in the research.

271 – 307 Well-presented emphases of thinking of different categories of respondents need to be documented with concrete quantitative results, systematized based on the categories now listed in the text. It is also necessary to make clearer links of opinion between different groups about the observed areas, necessary for the improvement of the curriculum of each field of study.

365 Conclusions should not include literature references.

371 – 374 In addition to this conclusion, it is necessary to better study the literature and based on it (if not on the investigation experience), in the discussion analyze the possibilities from which the proposals will be presented in the conclusions. Along with the introduced 'Transferable Skills' course, it is necessary to propose ways of evaluating and solving ethical dilemmas (e.g. based on the argumentation of students' attitudes) and outline proposals for evaluating the development of team competencies and project effectiveness (e.g. with the help of rubrics or other forms of criterion evaluation).

Author Response

On behalf of the authors, I would like to acknowledge the reviewers for the time and effort they have put into this paper, and for their valuable comments and helpful suggestions, which made it possible to improve the overall quality of the submitted paper.

The revised manuscript considered all the comments and suggestions made by the Referees.

In the following pages, the modifications and improvements to the original manuscript are shown and discussed.

Looking forward to hear from you,

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Important topic to explore and has potential to give guidance to HEI curriculum committees in best preparing students for future work environments.

Organization of the methods section should be improved. Subheadings for each of the participant groups (alumni, teachers, students, employers) and/or data collection mode (interview/focus group) is a bit hard to determine. Adding a summary table of the different aspects could be helpful. Why did you choose focus groups vs interviews for each participant type?

Why did you choose to study mechanical and biomedical engineering professions?

What are the modules referred to in the results section? (right before 3.1)

Provided quotes from the participants do not directly tie to the need for development of 'Soft Skills'. It would be helpful to see the participant data directly related to this topic as it is the focus of the paper.

Grammatical issues throughout that distract the reader. Be sure to correct vocabulary and sentence structure.

Author Response

On behalf of the authors, I would like to acknowledge the reviewers for the time and effort they have put into this paper, and for their valuable comments and helpful suggestions, which made it possible to improve the overall quality of the submitted paper.

The revised manuscript considered all the comments and suggestions made by the Referees.

In the following pages, the modifications and improvements to the original manuscript are shown and discussed.

Looking forward to hear from you,

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

I thank you for the answers and the effort invested in improving your work based on the comments received. 

I wish you much success in your future scientific work.

Reviewer 2 Report

The description of participants greatly helps situate the reader in your study. 

The figures with the categories for each population were really helpful!

thanks for addressing my concerns.