Building Emotional Intelligence in an PBL environment through Empathy and Teamwork.

In recent years, competencies like empathy, leadership, adaptability, and social-cultural awareness have become increasingly important in higher education, particularly in engineering, medical, and healthcare fields. This shift is driven by global challenges like climate change and the need for skills to address complex, unpredictable problems and foster lifelong skills and resilience.
At Aalborg University (AAU), students engage in team-based, problem-oriented learning, which can enhance these competencies. However, the benefits of this approach on developing such skills have been under-researched. Recent studies at AAU highlight students' emotional responses to future uncertainties and sustainability challenges, emphasizing the need for empathy and care in education. The project aims to explore how student empathy is developed at AAU. Empathy is crucial in medical education for improving patient-doctor relationships and reducing stress, and in engineering for human-centered design and problem-solving. The project will investigate empathy's role in enhancing students' overall educational experience.

Engineering Education and Design, Empathy, Problem Based Learning, Collaboration