Promoting Students' Soft Skills in a Telecommunication Engineering Course with an Elevator Pitch Activity

Abstract

An elevator pitch is a short summary used to quickly and simply define a process, product, service, organization, or event and its value proposition. The name comes from the idea that it should be possible to deliver the sum-mary within the time span of an elevator ride, so anywhere between 30 sec-onds and 2 minutes, which means the key points need to get across quickly. In this particular educational context, technical students have been encour-aged to defend, under the typical rules of the elevator pitch, the knowledge acquired during the semester in a specific subject. This contribution focuses on the classroom experience and how the transversality of the activity can help students to strive and think in a different way than they are used to in the classroom of a technical career.