Role-Playing Games as a Strategy to Incorporate Social Skills in Electrical Engineering Programs [Education Corner]

Traditionally, engineering degree programs are reasonably good at transmitting technical knowledge to their students; regardless of the particular conditions of each university, lecturers usually have extensive experience in doing so. However, employers are demanding soft skills in addition to the abilities our engineers master, and strategies used to incorporate them within our compact and information-packed programs are required. This article presents an experience in promoting skills for communicating and interacting with ordinary people in technical issues, performed among electrical engineering students from the radio-frequency (RF) branch. Our proposal is to use role-playing techniques to train students to communicate with people who are afraid of electromagnetic (EM) exposure effects, which has immediate implications during 5G network deployment. Moreover, the use of forum facilities in e-learning platforms allows such techniques to be integrated within an online course.