Soft Skills Assessment Guidelines

Higher education is increasingly now established in ways that entail strategies to cope with change, competitiveness, uncertainty, and high expectations of both students and communities. Recent years have seen significant curricular developments in an attempt to foster learning relevance, authenticity, and to boost student employability. Impactful changes are yet to be seen. There is obviously a gap between the needs and demands of future employers and the skills of the students graduating from the universities. Most often, students will possess sufficient theoretical knowledge but lack other necessary capacities, such as soft skills or teamwork experience required in work contexts. Societal and economic development depends on educational institutions to play a pivotal role in preparing the future workforce. Seen through this lens, soft skills become a game-changer in student employability and an expected response to the changing higher education socio-economic landscapes. Soft Skills Assessment Guidelines sets the stage for teachers and universities leadership to re-think curriculum design and pedagogical approaches by integrating soft skills as learning outcomes and the respective assessment methodologies. Theoretical and practical considerations, as well as examples from six higher education institutions and organizations, are provided to illustrate various approaches to soft skills assessment. Classification of soft skills Scholar opinions on soft skills and their classification vary widely. The proposed set of soft skills selected by the project takes as starting the soft skills pointed out as the ones that should be considered to be incorporated in the HEIs programs are those the students should develop in order to improve their employability. The proposed classification framework highlights three categories: intellectual skills, self-management skills, and oral and written communication skills. The conceptual analysis of the three categories underpins the considerations on soft skills assessment in higher education and the selection of practices and examples. Considerations on soft skills assessment in higher education Assessment is not the final stage of the learning process, but rather a process designed to enhance learning and teaching. Theoretical underpinnings are drawn upon Miller’s pyramid model of assessment. Real-life learning contexts and therefore students’ behaviours in such contexts are revisited. The four levels of competence development, namely knowledge, application of knowledge, skills, and performance grounded the selection of assessment methodologies. Soft skills assessment methodologies Setting out an operational classification and specific assessment recommendations allows for the identification of two clusters of soft skills assessment methodologies: direct assessments and indirect assessments. These clusters group together methodologies and practices emerging from well-established and innovative pedagogical approaches alike. Socio-constructivist models, student approaches to learning, and other positivist pedagogies underpin the examples clustere