Specifically, does it lead to improvements in the quality of their work, engagement, performance, and final unit assignment submissions (e.g., reflective writing in blogs, critical appraisals, collaborative work, and final videos showcasing hard skills)?
My original intention was to evaluate this across three terms, but for the purposes of this ARP, I had to focus on the first term only—and even before their final term submission, which occurred during the
Final Answer:
Yes, but only when embedded over the long term, across the entire MA course.
- One term alone is not sufficient because students are still trying to understand what soft skills are—their definitions, how and when to use them, how to monitor their usage, and how to identify them correctly in their activities and tasks.
- Many students still failed to correctly identify and label soft skills. In addition, they seemed to explore soft skills only when explicitly requested for their presentations.
- They did not mention soft skills in their blogs for other classes. This may be due to the cognitive effort required and the need for high levels of self-knowledge and self-awareness.
- By the time of the final project presentations, students interacted more with the list of soft skills I provided and analysed them against their work. Based on this, I would say that the majority—14 out of 16 students—showed increased acknowledgement and usage of soft skills, either fully or partially, within the first term. I now need to focus on helping the remaining three students embrace and adopt soft skills recognition and monitoring.
