Defining the industrial and engineering management professional profile: a longitudinal study based on job advertisements

The engineering professional profiles have been discussed by several branches of the engineering field. On the one hand, this discussion helps to understand the professional practice and contributes to the specification of the competences that are suitable for each function and company culture. On the other hand, it is an essential starting point for the definition of curricula in engineering schools. Thus, this study aims to characterize, in an innovative way based on job advertisements, the demand for competences and areas of practice for Industrial Engineering and Management contributing for the definition of a professional profile. This characterization is based on the analysis of 1391 job advertisements, collected during seven years from a Portuguese newspaper. The data analysis takes into account the job description in which two categories were considered: areas of professional practice (e.g. project management) and transversal competences (e.g. teamwork). Considering the total number of job advertisements, it was possible to identify 1,962 cumulative references for 11 professional practice areas and 5,261 cumulative references for transversal competences. The contribution of this study lies on the identification of the main areas of practice and the main transversal competences demanded by employers.This work was partially funded by COMPETE-POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007043 and FCT-UID-CEC-00319-2013

Self-Assessment and Self-Reflection to Measure and Improve Self-Regulated Learning in the Workplace

People’s self-monitoring of their learning has extensive impact on generating opportunities for professional development. Self-monitoring before, during, and after completing work-related tasks affects decision-making, learning behavior, strategy use, and learning motivation. When self-assessing, a person compares performance against some standard. When self-reflecting, a person makes in-depth judgments about the learning process, motivation, beliefs, plans, and outcomes. Engagement in self-monitoring is a prerequisite for professional development. However, in most work environments, there is only limited facilitation of self-monitoring activities. Opportunities for self-assessment and self-reflection may be scarce, because it is complex to define individualized competency standards that match the workplace reality. This chapter describes reasons why it is often challenging for workplace learners to self-monitor their professional development. Then, recommendations to implement and improve self-monitoring activities are described. Development of competencies and learning goals that clarify the needed knowledge, skills, and attitudes can improve self-assessment accuracy. Further, to self-monitor professional development, people should be trained to focus on predictive cues that give indications about actual progress. Because persons remain largely unaware of their biased self-monitoring, they need continued opportunities and repeated feedback. Moreover, to reflect on affective and motivational aspects of workplace-based learning, employees could use learning journals and questionnaires as support tools to evaluate practice and identify areas for development and feedback seeking. Importantly, to stay motivated to self-monitor learning, people need to be informed about the usefulness of metacognitive activities and obtain autonomy to design individual learning trajectories

No evidence of locus heterogeneity in familial microcephaly with or without chorioretinopathy, lymphedema, or mental retardation syndrome.

BACKGROUND: Microcephaly with or without chorioretinopathy, lymphedema, or mental retardation syndrome (MCLMR) is a rare autosomal dominant disorder with variable expressivity. It is characterized by mild-to-severe microcephaly, often associated with intellectual disability, ocular defects and lymphedema. It can be sporadic or inherited. Eighty-seven patients have been described to carry a mutation in KIF11, which encodes a homotetrameric motor kinesin, EG5. METHODS: We tested 23 unreported MCLMR index patients for KIF11. We also reviewed the clinical phenotypes of all our patients as well as of those described in previously published studies. RESULTS: We identified 14 mutations, 12 of which are novel. We detected mutations in 12 affected individuals, from 6 out of 6 familial cases, and in 8 out of 17 sporadic patients. Phenotypic evaluation of patients (our 26 + 61 earlier published = 87) revealed microcephaly in 91%, eye anomalies in 72%, intellectual disability in 67% and lymphedema in 47% of the patients. Unaffected carriers were rare (4 out of 87: 5%). Family history is not a requisite for diagnosis; 31% (16 out of 52) were de novo cases. CONCLUSIONS: All inherited cases, and 50% of sporadic cases of MCLMR are due to germline KIF11 mutations. It is possible that mosaic KIF11 mutations cause the remainder of sporadic cases, which the methods employed here were not designed to detect. On the other hand, some of them might have another mimicking disorder and genetic defect, as microcephaly is highly heterogeneous. In aggregate, KIF11 mutations likely cause the majority, if not all, of MCLMR