This study seeks to meet the need to find ways of introducing soft skills in the daily work of university students. Like hard skills, these soft skills must also be developed in order to meet the professional demands of a globalised world where interpersonal and intrapersonal skills play a fundamental role in effective communication when carrying out a specific job. For this purpose, a collaborative task was proposed in the art module of a teaching degree using the Padlet and Moodle educational platforms. The results show that these platforms aimed at fostering self-directed work have a positive effect, underlining the importance of collaborative peer learning environments. At the same time, they highlight the difficulty of conceptualising a set of variables to define and characterise soft skills, and the challenge faced by university lecturers in order to effectively put them into practice.
TopIntroduction
Two of the sustainable development goals that governments must achieve under the 2030 Agenda are to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all (SDG 4) and to promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all (SDG 8).
These goals are closely linked, given that in an increasingly demanding labour market immersed in a process of constant change and globalisation (Andrews & Higson, 2008; King, 2003), professionals cannot rely on merely technical and specific knowledge, i.e. ‘hard skills’ (Heckman, 2011; Moore & Morton, 2017; Ong, 2002; Taylor, 2005; Velasco, 2012; Weston, 2020) and must complement their studies with the acquisition of interpersonal and intrapersonal skills, known as ‘soft skills’ (Clarke, 2018; Mitchell et al., 2010; Ritter et al., 2017; Wheeler, 2016; Winstead et al., 2009).
Soft skills (Forum, 2016) refer to character traits of individuals that continue to develop throughout their lives and help to promote personal and professional achievement (Balcar et al., 2011; Cappellari et al., 2017; Heckman & Kautz, 2012; Hurrell, 2016; OECD, 2015; Roegiers, 2016; Scippo & Rubat du Mérac, 2021; Tito Maya & Serrano Orellana, 2016). Nowadays, along with the necessary technical knowledge they have become essential in order to access the labour market in all professional fields (Cimatti, 2016).
Universities are seeking to meet this demand by fostering acquisition and development of soft skills by students during their learning process (De Santis & du Mérac, 2019; García et al., 2016; Sin & Neave, 2016; Succi & Canovi, 2020; Tomlinson, 2012). The focus of this study, the art course of the Faculty of Education at the University of Alicante, is implementing soft skills in its teaching actions together with the technical knowledge or hard skills (Weston, 2020) of the different subjects that make up the curriculum of these courses (Aparicio-Flores et al., 2022; Chust Pérez & Esteve Faubel, 2022). Accordingly, this study focuses on the development of soft skills together with instrumental skills in the art classroom through the implementation of collaborative digital platforms such as Moodle and Padlet.
In terms of the platforms chosen, Moodle is one of the most widely used open source Learning Management Systems (LMS) in the higher education sector because it provides a dynamic and modular learning environment (Islam & Azad, 2015). The University of Alicante uses this educational platform in its virtual classroom and so the students are perfectly familiar with it as they have already used it for different subjects during the four years of their degree.
The second platform implemented, Padlet, is a collaborative ICT tool designed for teaching and learning (Mehta et al., 2021; Shuker & Burton, 2021) which teachers and learners alike find both simple to use and versatile. It favours implementation of different learning methodologies through information exchange and communication via online walls or bulletin boards that allow the sharing of content in the form of posts (Shuker & Burton, 2021). This collaborative work in the nature of a discussion helps creates meaningful learning by establishing important bonds with classmates (Sætra, 2021; Shoecraft, 2020).