The project goal stem from three preconditions: the necessity to develop and train transversal skills to provide students with right skills to enable graduate’s employability in changing labour market, the necessity to provide unified evaluation system supported by online tools to encompass education disruption; the necessity to provide teachers with skills and tools to improve online and blended teaching enabling both hard and soft skills education. Overall project goal is to create soft skills standard system to address incoherence in training and evaluation of transversal skills in digital environment. Such framework would be beneficial for further establishment of soft skills recognition and validation system in EU. There will be 5 project partners working on 5 intellectual outputs: preliminary analysis on current state-of-the-art of digital soft skills training, soft skills evaluation methodology and tools, soft skills simulator module-a digital tool, soft skills training and evaluation in digital environment (training scheme) and handbook explaining the standard soft skills system deployment. The system will be developed by consortium of partners: ABC-Academic Business Centrum (association), Technische Universität Dresden, Fachhochschule Oberösterreich, Masaryk University, Haskolin a Bifrost. Project partners’ previous activities and research focused on methodologies supporting interaction in class and soft skills development, namely project-based learning, design thinking as well as use of digital instruments within classes and online learning. Partners will use this didactics and teaching tools to address the gap between online and offline teaching in the training of soft skills such as critical thinking, creativity, communication and collaboration. The project will aim to deliver course templates (teaching unit templates) with preselected techniques and tools to address soft skills training and evaluation in digital environment in 3 main areas: technology, economics, languages. To enhance the soft skills training, project partners will create soft skills simulator module to support the training, course scheduling and evaluation. University teachers will gain new skills and tools via multiplier events which will lead to long-term improvement of transversal skills development and inclusion into study courses thus improving overall education quality a graduate’s preparedness.
In the project, we focused on developing a document called the Soft Skills Standard System, i.e. a comprehensive methodology on the principles, methods and techniques of how it is appropriate to include soft skills training in higher education. We supplemented the methodology with the development of two digital platforms to support the training of students' cooperative and creative activities. At the same time, we also verified the procedures for implementing the developed procedures for educators in the form of workshops and interactive exercises. We also prepared dissemination activities for the use of outputs after the end of the project.
We deal with the modernization of higher education didactics with a focus on the development of soft skills, team cooperation of students and their connection to practice. Already in the past, we participated in the creation of design thinking manuals for university education. The current challenges of the labor market as well as new accreditation requirements require study programs to include educational methods that support, in addition to building skills, the personal development of students and a higher readiness for interactive work in interdisciplinary and intercultural teams. In the conditions of the CEE countries, it is required that study programs be supplemented with didactic methods that will provide students with opportunities to develop soft skills. However, since educators lack concrete implementation manuals on how to supplement common syllabi with new techniques, it is necessary to develop general instructions for training and assessment of soft skills, as well as specific manuals for various fields of study. Another challenge for universities is what suitable digital tools can be used for training and assessment of soft skills. It is also important to think through the whole process of how to make available new techniques together with digital tools for educators and help them apply them during education for students.