Teaching Soft Skills to Business Students

Abstract

Recent reports have suggested that many employees in the workforce today lack essential soft skills. This research analyzes the effectiveness of multiple classroom assignments for teaching soft skills in a Business Communication course. Five distinct pedagogical strategies were used in an effort to teach soft skills, including a self-analysis, an interview, a guest lecturer, a journal article, and a soft skills video. Results offer insights into students’ perceptions of the most helpful pedagogical approaches for teaching soft skills.

The Relationship between Self-Esteem and Achievement Goals in University Students: The Mediating and Moderating Role of Defensive Pessimism

“…Measures that teachers can take include: (a) encouraging teaching-learning processes that stimulate individual improvement and cooperative learning (rather than competition), (b) emphasize the students' worth regardless of their academic performance (e.g., their personal strengths), (c) be explicit about the processes the students should follow to satisfactorily complete tasks and achieve set objectives, and (d) encourage the students to analyze their results in light of their efforts and their proper or improper use of strategies (rather than attributing this to personal capability). Through these initiatives, the student would develop a set of essential personal skills and resources for effectively managing their day-to-day problems and challenges [71]. To the extent that they encourage adaptive personal and professional development, these types of "soft skills" [72] would, in short, contribute to quality education, set out as one of the supporting pillars of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development [68].…”

Protocol: Literature review on the psychometric properties of the short versions of the scales of social desirability in the answers to competency self-assessment questionnaires

“…Por otro lado, resulta extremadamente complicado medir las competencias transversales por parte de los profesores o mandos, sobre todo ante grupos numerosos de estudiantes o subordinados (Ayhan & Oztemel, 2014;Halfhill & Nielsen, 2007;Medina-López et al, 2011;Ramirez Bayarri et al, 2016). Por ello, a veces es necesario plantearse la posibilidad de que sean los propios evaluados los que se auto-evalúen esas competencias transversales (Anthony & Garner, 2016;Butter & van Beest, 2017;Marin-Garcia et al, 2017;Ramirez Bayarri et al, 2016;Watts et al, 2012). Sin embargo no hay una respuesta concluyente acerca de si, en general, los alumnos o los profesionales pueden ser unos buenos evaluadores de sus propias competencias o habilidades (De Grez et al, 2012;Diez et al, 2013;García-Ros, 2011;Gopinath, 1999;Jonsson & Svingby, 2007;Leach, 2010;Marin-Garcia & Santandreu-Mascarell, 2015;Stefani, 1994).…”

Social Justice and Entrepreneurial Identity

“…In contrast to "hard" skills that rely on technical content knowledge, "soft skills" are often viewed as "non-cognitive" [52] and affective qualities or abilities that are not taught in school. Like entrepreneurship, soft skills have enjoyed significant attention in TPC scholarship, often in connection to internships [6,40] or fostering communication skills [1,8,9]. One reason for this attention is that soft skills have been identified as important for success across professional workplaces [20,32].…”