These are actionable next steps for curriculum design:
1. Redesign Delivery Approach
- Replace pre-class flipped classroom with optional post-class lessons.
- Make completion of in-class tasks at home mandatory, with deliverables due in the next session to increase time-on-task and thus opportunities to identify and apply soft skills ahead of unit assignment delivery deadline.
2. Strengthen Soft Skills Integration
- Workshops: Deliver one dedicated soft skills workshop during my own classes (mandatory), scheduled in Term 2 or 3 when workload allows.
- Soft Skills Passport → VFX Soft Skills List: Convert the passport into a clear reference list for students to use in presentations and blog submissions.
- Padlet Journalling: Continue using Padlet for Pre-Production presentations. Add a midterm deadline (November) for work-in-progress uploads to encourage ongoing reflection and enable feedback.
- Blog Documentation: Make blogs the primary channel for reflective writing on soft skills.
- Deliver a 40-minute lecture in Term 2 or early Term 3 to clarify how to use blog to monitor soft skills development and assessment. I can prompt students to Include soft skills in their critical appraisal and to state how they impacted your work.
- Ensure Academic Support workshop on blog documentation occurs in Term 2.
3. Embed Soft Skills in Assessment and Feedback
- Require students to state soft skills explicitly in blogs as part of unit assignment deliverables.
- Include soft skills identification and improvement points in every feedback session when marking assignments.
- During classes and tutorials, name and explain soft skills demonstrated or missing to reinforce metacognitive awareness.
4. Promote Metacognitive Regulation
- Use examples and explanations of soft skills during teaching and feedback to help students plan, monitor, and evaluate their usage.
- Encourage students to embed soft skills reflection across all classes, not just yours, to support long-term career growth.
- Position blog documentation and critical appraisals as the main channel for consistent metacognitive regulation.
5. Long-Term Strategy
- Implement these interventions across all four terms, not just Term 1, to allow gradual internalisation of soft skills.
- Delivering Project and time management workshops earlier in the course to address common gaps.
- Use an informal checklist during feedback:
- Identify which soft skills were demonstrated.
- Suggest one or two soft skills to improve for the next project.
- Keep this consistent so students see a pattern.