DEVELOPING SOFT SKILLS IN A B-LEARNING

ENVIRONMENT

Paula Peres and Ana Azevedo

Instituto Superior de Contabilidade e Administração do Porto – Instituto Politécnico do Porto, Portugal

Keywords: b-Learning, Higher Education, Soft Skills, b-Learning strategies.

Abstract: The development of soft skills in students enrolled in higher education courses is recognized as a

fundamental element to promote the success of students’ integration in real workplace situations.

Nevertheless, if we look at nowadays syllabus, we attest that the main effort is made on the contents instead

of being made on soft skills. Content-based teaching and learning may not promote the development of

higher-order thinking skills considered crucial in Higher Education. This paper presents a reflection on the

importance of paradigm shifting concerning the development of learning strategies. Nowadays, the concerns

with cognitive goals assume a role in balance with the importance of transversal abilities, e. g. soft skills.

This paper adds a practical vision on these concerns, describing some learning activities designed in order to

develop students’ soft skills. The activities described were carried out on the context of an Information and

Communication Technologies course, in a higher education institution. The activities developed were used

to help students reaching the cognitive objectives and developing soft skills, so important in today's

societies. This paper also presents a reflection on the role of web technologies to improve students’ skills.

A case study is presented.

1 INTRODUCTION

A deep analysis in the curriculum of Portuguese

higher education courses shows that although the

official institutions websites present the main course

objectives, many times these are insufficient

considering what is expect from students (Peres &

Pimenta, 2009).

The objectives specification is in many times,

defined in teachers’ meetings, in which the

importance of developing communication amongst

students in different ways and the importance of

knowledge sharing in a global community are

enhanced. Some enhancement is also given to the

importance of “Know How to do and How to

Behave”. The value given to workgroup ability and

oral communication are also enhanced. However,

these transversal objectives are seldom explained in

a clear and complete way in order to help the design

of learning activities.

The European Union (EU, 2006) outlines the

nine main abilities required by European enterprises,

also named as soft skills. These skills are presented

in Table 1.

Table 1: European Union Soft Skills list.

Soft Skill

(SS)

Description

SS1

Learning to learn

SS2 Information processing and management

SS3

Deduction and analytical skills

SS4

Decision making skills

SS5 Communication skills, language skills

SS6 Teamwork, team based learning and teaching

SS7 Creative thinking and problem solving skills

SS8

Management and leadership, strategic

thinking

SS9 Self-management and self-development

1.1 Soft Skills in Information and

Communication Technologies

Courses

Soft Skills are fundamental issues for professionals,

as can be concluded in a survey presented by

Fernadez (Fernandez, 2007). Several enterprises’

responsibles, belonging to technological areas, were

inquired about which they consider to be the most

important skills an Information and Tecnhologies

Peres P. and Azevedo A. (2010).

DEVELOPING SOFT SKILLS IN A B-LEARNING ENVIRONMENT.

In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Computer Supported Education, pages 96-100

DOI: 10.5220/0002778000960100

 SciTePress

(IT) professional should acquire during his academic

life, in order to efficiently accomplish his / her

professional responsibilities. Amongst the first ten

skills referred by the enterprise responsibles

inquired, seven were soft skills.

These seven soft skills were:

• Goal-directed Management;

• Team Management and Leadership;

• Written Communication;

• Oral Communication;

• Continuous Improvement and Inovation;

• Critical Thinking;

• Conflict Management and emotional

intelligence.

A correspondence between these soft skills and

the ones presented in Table 1, is done in Table 2.

Table 2: Correspondence between soft skills defined by

the EU and expected soft skills for IT professionals.

European

Union Soft

Skills

Expected Soft Skils for IT professionals

SS2; SS3; SS4;

SS8

Goal-directed management

SS4; SS6; SS8 Team management and leadership

SS5 Writen communication

SS5 Oral communication

SS1; SS2; SS9 Continuous improvement and inovation

SS3; SS7 Critical thinking

SS4; SS6; SS7

Conflit management and emotional

intelligence

The notion of competency extends the

conception of objectives. "In school, is not enough

to know facts or mastering concepts (knowledge),

'know-how' or 'learn to become' (capabilities), you

need to know to solve problems in context" (Barreira

& Moreira, 2004). The notion of competency

includes three components: knowledge, skills and

problem-situations. Skills are developed in the

knowledge area of each course, but also in the field

of interdisciplinary action (soft skills) (Barrier &

Moreira, 2004).

The explanation of the teaching needs should

accomplish the objectives set out by Kemp et al.

(1998), guiding the teacher in the design of

instruction and assessment, and conducting students

in the process of learning.

The case study described in this paper refers to a

course in Information and Communication

Technologies (ICT). The soft skills considered were

the ones that were expected for IT professinals,

referred above. Using web technologies, several

activities were developed in order to increase these

soft skills in students and, at the same time, develop

technical (hard) skills.

1.2 The Role of Web Technologies on

the Soft Development of Skills

Technology has the potential to serve as an

environment to explore students’ own

interpretations, students constructing own meanings,

negotiating and/or defending these with peers.

Besides that, technology also offers student‐centered

experiences and it can encourage a constructive

discourse and empower independent, critical

thinking (Porter, 2000) and ‘new literacies’

(Howard‐Bender & Mulcahy, 2007).

The issue in this paper is about how teachers can

organize their teaching plans, incorporating

technology, in order to achieve the cognitive

objectives and soft skills. A brief curricula analysis

in our school reveals that the focus tends to be on

themes: there are content based curricula.

Furthermore, although literature does focus on

technology to develop competencies, by looking at

the programs available, it is clear that the way that

teachers choose to integrate or not integrate

technology, is entirely up to them, depending on the

day, time, class size and so on. There are no specific

criteria.

1.3 Contributions and Paper Layout

The main contribution of this paper is that it shows

that it is possible to operationalize the academic

planning to support the requirements of nowadays

professionals by using web technologies. The case

study presented reports a successful situation that

implements a “blended” approach (b-learning) to

develop students’ soft skills in parallel with

technical skills. The b-learning approach combines

online activities with classroom-based activities.

This allows taking the best of each solution for the

advantage of both the learner and the organization.

The remainder of this article is as follows: in

section 2, a presentation of the case study is made.

In section 3, learning strategies are presented as a

way to develop soft skills. Finally, conclusions and

future work are explored.

2 CASE STUDY INTRODUCTION

Different knowledge levels may be established for

the same content. Imagine a teacher who states that

it is important to make students understand the main

contents and also to make them achieve critical

thinking skills on the matter. If we only see the

DEVELOPING SOFT SKILLS IN A B-LEARNING ENVIRONMENT

teacher giving information, then learning activities

are not aligned with his / her objectives. Students

may understand contents but it will be difficult to

achieve the ability to develop critical thinking. On

the evaluation process, if the teacher asks students to

remember and understand contents, he is being

honest but if he asks students to have a critical

attitude, he is being inconsistent because he did not

promote the development of this kind of skills. In

this context, there is not a consistency between

learning activities and learning objectives.

The b-learning strategy should help students to

reach cognitive objectives and considers soft skills

development. The b-learning experience described

in this section, took into account the elements

referred.

2.1 Description of a b-Learning

Collaborative Strategy

In this section, we describe a collaborative database

construction in order to promote motivation and

effective learning. Fifty-six students from four

different classes from the first year of a

communication degree, in a higher education

institution, took part on this online activity. This

activity was carried out during the second term of

2007/2008 school year. The course was lectured in a

traditional classroom complemented with a distance

learning environment, a b-learning situation, using

the learning management system MOODLE, which

helps the development of collaborative work. All

learning objectives (classified according to Bloom’s

taxonomy) and soft skills were shared by all and

every class. As pre-requisites, students who have

enrolled in the Information and Communication

Technologies course would be able to work with

Windows, Word processor and Internet Software.

Nevertheless, students did not have any learning

experience in a b-learning situation. Course

curriculum was defined in order to achieve the

learning objectives. In the activities’ design process

we tried to align all tasks with the learning

objectives and the evaluation method. The activity

described has efficiently promoted students

engagement who became aware of their knowledge,

of the studied subjects and could compare it with

that of the other students.

For all the four classes, the proposed activity

consisted in the development of collaborative

databases (one per class), through the

implementation of issues that were practical and

discursive in nature. In the beginning, four small

working groups were formed in each of the classes,

by random selection. The overall activity was

Table 3: Activity’s tasks.

Task number Task description

T1 Groups definition

T2 Requirements analysis

T3 Relational Model and normalization

T4 Preparation of the presentation

T5 Public Presentation/discussion of

sub-solutions

T6 Group 1 solution

T7 Group 2 solution

T8 Group 3 solution

T9 Group 4 solution

T10 Implementation using MsAccess

T11 Group 1 solution

T12 Group 2 solution

T13 Group 3 solution

T14 Group 4 solution

T15 Product Tests and Validation

T16 Presentation preparation / User’s Guide

T17 Public presentation

T18 Choosing the best database

divided in subtasks, which intended to conduct

students during the course. All the considered tasks

are presented in Table 3. A wiki was created to

support communication amongst group elements,

outside the classroom. It also supported

communication amongst different groups. In

addition, it was used for file sharing whenever it was

necessary. All the defined tasks were included in the

wiki’s first page. This wiki revealed itself as an

important tool for communication during the

development of the database, particularly when

communication amongst different groups was

necessary.

Each group was responsible for developing an

application module, which was a part of a larger

MsAccess

database to support the organization of

an event. This event was different for each of the

classes, but the tasks were the same for every class.

The critical tasks were T6 to T9 and T11 to T14.

During these tasks coordination amongst different

groups was necessary since some of the database

tables were shared by more than one application

module. In order to minimize problems, public

presentations of the partial solutions were organized.

Each group’s public presentation was followed by

reflection. The discussions were taken in order to

define the critical aspects to consider for modules

connection to work effectively.

The final project resulting from each class work

was presented in a public section with all the

students belonging to the four classes, as well as

other elements from the school community.

2.2 Students’ Perception

It was important to make a final reflection on what

CSEDU 2010 - 2nd International Conference on Computer Supported Education

was learnt and how it was learnt. The activity carried

out helped students to develop social and ethical

skills. During the activity students tried to work

together in a coordinated way in order to obtain a

final product with high quality level.

The analysis of students’ perception was made at

the end of the process and the results should be used

in future course editions. The questionnaires analysis

carried out on the MOODLE platform shows that

students were satisfied with the activity developed.

97% of the students classified it as very good and

3% classified it as good. Group members’

coordination was also considered as positive by the

students. Nevertheless, some groups referred that

there were some conflicts during the development of

the activity but that they were able to solve those

conflicts and reach a good result.

After public presentation (T 17), students were

asked to vote for the best database, corresponding to

a class project. This selection was done through the

use of MOODLE. Students were able to make their

decision supported on what they truly think. Their

final decision was aligned with the one of the

teachers.

3 LEARNING STRATEGIES AS A

WAY TO DEVELOP SOFT

SKILLS

The design of an online activity includes the

planning of a dynamic online interaction, an

essentially socio-constructivist view. The activity

described in this paper was seen as a way to develop

soft skills. Therefore, each one of the tasks referred

in Table 3 were planned to allow students to achieve

the soft skills referred in Table 2. In Table 4 soft

skills intended to be developed in each of the

activity tasks are presented.

Table 4: Soft Skills for each activity task.

Soft Skill Task number

Goal-directed management T1 T2, T3, T4,T5, T6, T7, T8,

T9, T10, T11, T12, T13, T14,

T15, T16, T17, T18

Team management and

leadership

T4, T5, T6, T7, T8, T9, T11,

T12, T13, T14

Written communication T16

Oral communication

T5, T17

Continuous improvement

and innovation

T5, T15

Critical thinking

T2, T3, T5, T15, T18

Conflict management and

emotional intelligence

T5, T6, T7, T8, T9, T11, T12,

T13, T14, T17

3.1 How do Tasks Develop Soft Skills

All the tasks were defined through the specification

of clear goals, which groups have to achieve in order

to conclude them. Therefore, all the tasks were

designed to develop “Goal-directed management”.

During tasks T4 to T9 and T11 to T14, students

must mainly work as a team in order to obtain

results. They also have to interact with other groups.

In order to accomplish the tasks, students had to

develop team management capabilities as well as to

define/accept clear leadership.

The need to develop a user’s guide in task T16

was aligned with the development of “written

communication” skills. The need to develop “oral

communication” skills. We consider that these two

skills were very important in this particular case,

because students are from a communication degree.

“Continuous improvement and innovation” were

presented specially in tasks T5 and T1 during which

students tested, discussed and tried to present

innovative solutions in order to distinguish from

others. This was supported by “critical thinking”

which is the basis for improvement and innovation.

“Critical thinking” was also presented in task T18,

when students had to choose the best database.

Tasks that involved interaction and agreements

between different groups were the ones that were

more suitable to develop “conflict management and

emotional intelligence”. This is the case of tasks T5

to T9, T11 to T14 and T17.

3.2 Was the Activity Effective?

The evaluation of the effectiveness of the activity in

developing the desired soft skills was done

informally.

Concerning “Goal-directed management” it can

be concluded that this soft skill was developed. This

is due to the fact that all the groups concluded the

eighteen tasks through the conclusion of the defined

tasks’ goals, thus being able to manage their work in

order to achieve specific goals.

As for “team management and leadership”, most

of the groups had some problems. Students refer to

some conflicts during the development of the

activities. This occurred in particular during tasks T6

to T9 and T11 to T15 where an interaction between

different groups was needed. At the end, students

managed the problems and worked as a team and

interacted with the other teams. Some of the students

came out as natural leaders.

Written and oral communication were a negative

surprise since students from a communication

DEVELOPING SOFT SKILLS IN A B-LEARNING ENVIRONMENT

degree had difficulties in communicating their ideas

and some of the students had weak presentations in

task T4, and bad user’s guides in task T16.

Fortunately, they improved their skills and their oral

presentation in task T17 was better. In any case

students were advised on the importance to develop

these skills.

Students were able to develop “conflict

management” skills since several conflicts that

occurred during the entire activity were solved by

them.

As for “emotional intelligence” we feel that there

is the need to deepen this aspect in the future.

4 CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE

WORK

If an institution adopts a Learning Management

System (LMS) it does not ensure the integration of

web technologies in the educational process

(Parlamento Europeu, 2002). The adoption of a LMS

may be viewed as an opportunity to improve

teaching-learning practices and soft skills

development. The clear definition of soft skills to be

improved, beyond cognitive objectives, gives

response to the demands of today’s professionals

and reflects the modernity of this vision. The

alignment of those objectives with learning

strategies avoids distractions and guides the path

directed to learning success. The activity presented

in this article showed that it is possible to define

ability objectives together with soft skills intended to

be developed. It also enhanced the importance of the

alignment with the evaluation process. As a

conclusion, we attest that the use of web technology,

in particular the b-learning environments, may

support all the referred elements.

Each school might experience a variety of

outcomes as a result of using b-learning technology.

We can increase students’ participation in the

learning activities. Simply by increasing the

diversity of training options and making training

more accessible, learners are more likely to take

advantage of learning opportunities. Learners have

different needs and many like the flexibility that e-

learning offers. In the past, learning programs might

not have been well integrated or consistent in their

quality. The use of b-learning has forced schools to

pay greater attention on how they use it. B-learning

might require a better planned approach and a

careful review of syllabus.

In many cases, introducing b-learning requires

experimentation and constant adjustments to

determine what works best in the process of

promoting the cognitive objectives and soft skills

acquisitions.

It is straightforward to evaluate cognitive

objectives. Nevertheless, it is not straightforward to

evaluate soft skills achievement level. Some of

them can be observed, as is the case of “Oral

Communication”, which can be evaluated by

students’ performance during public presentations,

for instance. The evaluation of the effectiveness of

the activity in developing the desired soft skills was

done informally. Future work includes the study of

models that allows the evaluation of the soft skills

achievement level.

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