This article seeks to reflect on effective presentation skills for
engineering students and the effect of specific interventions on the
quality of presentation skills. Most authors, who discuss
transferable competencies for engineers, refer to different types of
communication skills in general to oral and written
communication skills. Although there is a broad recognition on
the necessity of developing transferable skills in engineering
education, there is no general agreement on what these they
should be. Therefore, presentation skills are studied in the context
of a project-based learning experience at the Industrial
Management and Engineering (IME) programme of the University
of Minho. Six groups of seven first year students of the first
semester of the IME integrated Master´s degree programme
carried out a semester-long project from September 2010 till
January 2011. Three project oral presentations were conducted,
preceded by three interventions focused on specific aspects of oral
presentations. The teachers and the educational researchers
involved in the project coordination team commented on the
presentations and a qualitative analysis of the comments was
carried out. The organisation of the interventions revealed to be
well adapted to the developments that student went through in the
project.(undefined
