Providing engineers with OARS and EARS Effects of a skills-based vocational training in Motivational Interviewing for engineers in higher education Florian E. Klonek and Simone Kauffeld Institute of Psychology, Technische Universität Braunschweig, Braunschweig, Germany Abstract Purpose – Motivational Interviewing (MI) is a vocational communication skill from the helping professions. Verbal skills in MI are summarized under the acronyms OARS and EARS (open-ended questions/elaborating, affirmations, reflections, and summaries). The purpose of this paper is to outline how MI provides important skills for engineers, and demonstrate skill assessment by using an observation-based scientific approach. Design/methodology/approach – Totally, 25 engineering students took part in a skill-based MI training. Quality assurance of the training was assessed by using a repeated measurement design with multiple measures: systematic observations from recorded interactions and self-reported and standardized performance measures. Two external observers reliably coded the recorded conversations using the MI skill code. Findings – Trainees showed a significant increase of verbal skills in MI. Directive-confrontational behaviors decreased after training. Self-reported and performance measures indicated significant increases in MI post training. Conversational partners in the post-training condition showed significantly more motivation in comparison to partners before the training. Research limitations/implications – The main limitation of the study is the small sample size. However, training effect sizes showed large effects on verbal skills. Practical implications – Communication skills in MI can be taught effectively for a technical population. This study suggests that MI is effective within the higher education of technical professions who have to deal with motivational issues. Observational measures can be used for quality assurance purposes, but also serve as a feedback instrument for work-based learning purposes. Originality/value – This is the first study to evaluate training in MI for engineers using a multi- method approach with observational measures. Keywords Engineering education, Communication skill training, MI skill code, Motivational Interviewing, Reflective listening Paper type Research paper Introduction The curriculum of technical professions and engineering education often is heavily focussed on technical knowledge (Darling and Dannels, 2003). More recently, scholars have argued that oral communication skills are increasingly important for engineers (Ford and Teare, 2006; Seat et al., 2001). The rational for this argument is that communication skills are important for personal and professional development (Morreale and Pearson, 2008; Morreale et al., 2000), are rated among the most requested Higher Education, Skills and Work-Based Learning Vol. 5 No. 2, 2015 pp. 117-134 © Emerald Group Publishing Limited 2042-3896 DOI 10.1108/HESWBL-06-2014-0025 Received 27 June 2014 Revised 30 September 2014 22 December 2014 Accepted 10 February 2015 The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at: www.emeraldinsight.com/2042-3896.htm This research was supported by grants through the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology (BMWi, Grant No. 03ET1004B). The authors wish to thank Anna Witzel and Constanze Bühler for their thorough observational coding work in this project. 117 Providing engineers with OARS and EARS