As machines can perform an increasing range and variety of tasks, individuals will need to put more focus on developing the skills that humans excel at, such as social emotional skills or creativity. While the importance of social emotional skills will increase in the future job market, they are highly valued by employers at present, too. Motivation to perform, good communications skills, the ability to work in a team, flexibility/adaptability are frequently mentioned among the required skills of the optimal applicant. With the exception of jobs that require high level of specific technical knowledge, employers often focus more on the presence of positive attitudes and soft skills as they treat these skills less trainable. They also have less capacity to develop these skills in their employers. In the framework of our innovative OPENSEL project, partners from Hungary, the Netherlands and Malta collaborate to create three Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) for higher education students developing social emotional skills that are highly relevant for employability: presentation skills, teamwork skills, stress management skills. The presentation skills development MOOC (IO1) will cover topics such as: creating a presentation about a topic (including: ways of creating an interesting, convincing script about the topic, structuring and designing slides, interacting with the audience, delivery of presentations of different lengths), and presenting oneself during job interviews. The teamwork skills development MOOC (IO2) will cover topics such as: listening to the other person and to take the other’s perspective, communicating effectively/assertively, ability to adhere to group norms/rules, conflict resolution techniques and approaches. The stress management skills development MOOC (IO3) will cover topics such as: recognising own emotions and beliefs/interpretations, recognising own needs and motivations, identifying and modifying maladaptive thinking patterns, techniques for managing stress and building resilience. The MOOC development process will start with a joint staff training and will be closed by local multiplier events and an international final conference in Budapest. Our target groups are higher education teachers, trainers, mentors and their students. We also make the courses available for secondary school students (through ROC), to companies and to any interested other parties (anyone can join the courses free of charge if they register to them during the registration period). The project is innovative, as there are no similar MOOCs that are available for either the students of the participating partners. There are no similar complex online courses in these fields that are offered free of charge to the public. Compared to existing MOOCs/online courses (in other topics) offered by the partners, instead of the standards practice of recording lectures and turn them into video lessons, we will create many short videos that are specifically designed to illustrate different aspects of the selected topics. They will include dialogues between trainers about the most important issues, interviews with experts on the topics, visual demonstrations, role plays. The project fulfills real needs in both the training field and the industry. By the soft skills trainings the training portfolio of the partners will expand, the students will get useful and valuable knowledge and the companies will have employees with broader competences. These competences can be applied not only in the corporate environment, but also - such as stress management - ensure a better balance between working and family life. The long-term impact of the development is that the curricula developed in the project will form an integral part of education at all levels, and it will contribute to the better employability of the students as well.
The objective of the project was to create three Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) for students, developing social emotional skills that are highly relevant for employability: presentation skills, teamwork skills, stress management skills. Through the implementation of this project, the partners successfully developed training materials through soft skills related research and resources. Training and experience acquired through the newly developed MOOCs and the platform will also assist in readapting older and less user friendly versions. The consortium partners have applied to contribute towards the realization of this project with the intention to build further knowledge and resources in relation to soft skills. The majority of the student catchment hail from difficult backgrounds, thus an additional supplement of soft skills development opportunities might prove to be beneficial towards reaching their professional and career goals.
As we have found at the time of the research and needs analysis for this project:Higher education graduates increasingly require ‘soft’ skills and work experience to compete in a changing labor market. „Employers frequently list teamwork, collaboration, and oral and written communication skills as highly valuable yet hard-to-find qualities in potential new hires.” a 2017 survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers found. Besides the desk research, we carried out a Needs Analysis in the participating countries to find out how representatives of companies in Hungary, Malta and in the Netherlands value those three soft skills (presentation skills, teamwork skills, stress management skills) specifically, that we chose to develop. Based on our interviews, companies in each country valued highly these very skills and they assessed the presence/absence of them during job interviews.