Abstract:

The development of soft skills has a significant impact on an individual's life, from educational, vocational and social perspectives. Research has highlighted the need to adopt specific methodologies in the university educational context to stimulate active and conscious learning. Active teaching, based, for example, on experiential and group learning, can foster the development of technical knowledge, but also of transversal skills, the so-called soft skills, which are considered increasingly crucial to functionally adapt to the work and social context (Coppola et al., 2023; Iavarone, et al., 2017; Fedeli, 2019).

In light of this theoretical framework, the aim of this work is to evaluate the development of soft skills within a course whose setting was based on group experiential learning. The participants are 59 Italian students (96.6% female; age M=22.4, SD=3.08; 78% full-time students) undergraduates in the Social Work degree program who took the Group and Community Psychology course. To assess skill development, the Life Skills Ability Scale instrument (Lisimberti, 2019; Cronin et al., 2021) was administered at both the beginning and end of the course. The instrument consists of a battery of 43 questions divided into eight sections (goal achievement; teamwork; time management; communication; emotional skills; interpersonal skills; leadership; problem solving). Jamovi software was used for data analysis. The results show that there was a perceived increase in the mean score in all dimensions considered. In particular, significantly higher mean scores were found in the dimensions "time management" and "interpersonal skills." Therefore, these results demonstrate the importance of proposing an active teaching methodology to work on the formation of soft skills within the university courses, which are then necessary to interact functionally in the life context.

References:
[1] Coppola, I., Fiscone, C., Bracco, F. & Rania, N. (2023). Participative and conscious learning: an activeteaching experience with university students. ICERI2023 Proceedings. doi: 10.21125/iceri.2023.1530
[2] Iavarone M., Lo Presti F., & Stangherlin O., (2017). Participatory Didactics and the role of feedback through game-based technologies. Form@re - Open Journal per La Formazione in Rete, 17 (1), 176–189.
[3] Fedeli M. (2019). Active Learning o Lecturing? Strategie per integrare la lezione frontale e active learning. Educational Reflective Practices , 11, 95–113.
Lisimberti, C. (2023). Formare alle competenze trasversali nella Higher Education: L’esperienza del corso ‘Ricerca nel lavoro educativo’. FORMAZIONE & INSEGNAMENTO. 21 (2), 108-116.
[4] Cronin L, Allen J, Ellison P, Marchant D, Levy A & Harwood C (2021) Development and Initial Validation of the Life Skills Ability Scale for Higher Education Students. Studies in Higher Education, 46 (6), pp. 1011-1024. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2019.1672641

Keywords:

Soft skills, university students, Italy, innovative teaching.