In the 21st Century, it becomes of utmost importance for the educator and learner to be mindful of the evolution and application of factors that govern the mental state. Many studies revealed that the success of a professional is strongly dependent on their emotion management skills to manage themselves and associated responsibilities in a demanding environment. Emotionally intelligent professionals are also able to handle challenging situations involving other people. These days many industries, research establishments, and universities that hire graduate students conduct specialized training to enhance their soft skills, mainly interpersonal skills, to make their employees perform at their highest potential. One can maximize the gain from soft skills if they are well aware of the state of human psychology developed in the form of emotional intelligence and positive intelligence. In the last two decades, the concept of emotional intelligence was created by professional personality coaching groups. These trainings are heavily attended by professionals engaged in marketing and organization leaders to enhance their capability in the workplace. However, emotional intelligence is mainly about being aware of the mental state and maintaining control of one's actions during various mental states, such as anger, happiness, sadness, remorse, etc. Aspiring graduate students in science and technology generally lack formal training in understanding human behavior and traits that can adversely impact their ability to perform and innovate at the highest level. This paper focuses on training graduate students about the popular and practical transactional analysis science and assessing their competence in utilizing this knowledge to decipher their own and other people's behavior. Transactional analysis was taught to students via Student presentation-based effective teaching (SPET) methodology. Under this approach, graduate students enrolled in the MECH 500 Class were provided a set of questions to answer by self-reading of the recommended textbook "I am OK You are OK by Thomas Harris." Each student individually answered the assignment questions and then worked in the group to prepare a group presentation for the in-class discussion. Three group discussions were conducted to present different views about the four types of transactions and underlying human traits. Before transactional analysis training, students were also trained in Positive intelligence psychology tools for a similar objective. After the discussion, students were surveyed about the depth of their understanding. Students also reflected their views on the utility of transactional analysis with respect to positive intelligence. More than 75% of students mention that they gain high competency in understanding, defining, and utilizing transactional analysis. This study presents insights for positively impacting graduate students' mindsets as they pursue an unpredicted course of research that can sometimes become very challenging.
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Positive Intelligence Education for Unleashing Student Potential
Student attitude towards learning is strongly dependent on the hidden traits and habits they develop during the growing up period. Based on circumstances many students live in an individualistic mindset and perceive rather permanent misconceptions about the surrounding and opportunities. This paper focuses on providing positive intelligence training to college student to equip them with the necessary knowledge to not only unleash their talent but also to enable other students to give the highest performance. This paper focuses on an experiment under which 22 students in the senior level design of energy system course were exposed to the fundamental aspects of positive intelligence. Every student was tasked to demonstrate the depth of understanding about the positive intelligence and then apply it to group members to understand the strength and weakness. Most of the students expressed satisfaction that they were able to understand their attitude and behavior that they found as an impediment in their progress. After positive intelligence training, several students exhibited an increased maturity level and many students expressed higher degree of empathy towards their team members.
more » « less- Award ID(s):
- 1914751
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10176845
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- ASME 2019 International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition
- Volume:
- 5
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- V005T07A009
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.1115/IMECE2019-12032
