An Empirical Study: Opportunities Available For Undergraduate Engineering Students to Groom Their Performance Enhancement Skills (PES) and its Usage

Todays working environment requires engineering graduates to possess a combination of hard and soft skills. The soft skills namely team work, interpersonal skills and communication skills (all three grouped together and called as performance enhancement skills (PES) in this paper) are required to a great extent by the corporate world. This study focuses on assessing the extent to which students and faculty perceive that opportunity is available for the students to groom their performance enhancement skills and the extent of its usage. Research instruments with a 05 point scale and 17 items were developed (separately for faculty and students), its reliability with Cronbachs alpha measures and content validity were ensured. The data collected was analyzed using the software Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) by conducting independent sample t-test and paired sample t-test, both item wise and dimension wise. Inferences were drawn and conclusions on the availability of opportunities and utilization of the existing opportunities by UG engineering students to groom their performance enhancement skills were made.