Active Learning for Soft Skills Development

About This Course

Many studies (from Deloitte to ISFOL to Manpower Group) pointed out that soft skills are becoming as important as hard skills when looking for a job. Yet transversal or soft skills are the hardest skills to document and, at present, there is a mismatch between academic education and the skills required in the labour market. According to the McKinsey Report Education to Employment: Getting Europe’s Youth into Work (2014), providers, employers, and young people seem to live in “parallel universes.” For example, in Europe, 74 percent of education providers were confident that their graduates were prepared for work, yet only 38 percent of youth and 35 percent of employers agreed. Active learning methodologies such as case studies, project work, roleplays, etc..., integrated in disciplinary curricula, can support, in students, the development of transversal skills required by the job market. This MOOC, is addressed mainly to teachers and trainers who recognise the importance of potentiating such skills in students and want to improve their effective support to them in achieving this aim. It is also addressed to the ones who already actively engage students in their lessons, but still want to re-think about it and enhance even further the results of this interaction working on soft and digital soft skills. At the end of this course you will be able to: recognise and describe key elements of teaching practice design in the frame of active learning methodology; apply principles of constructive alignment to your curriculum starting with an effective formulation of Intended learning outcomes for soft skills; identify the key elements in defining assessment strategy for ILO achievement when working on soft skills Recognise and describe key elements of teaching practice design in the frame of active learning methodology elaborate best strategies and prevent critical issues when applying active learning methods in your class support at best your students while they develop soft and digital soft skills.

Through this MOOC, learners will be guided in discovering what active learning means and how the methodologies under its hat can be applied in order to develop soft skills. The course is organized in 5 weeks. Week 0 is an introduction to the MOOC, its structure and the main subject we are dealing with. From week 1 to week 5 core contents will be presented. Each one of these week is organized to explore the one of the aspects related to the design and implementation of active learning to develop soft skills. The argument of each week is introduced by a synthetic text, accompanied with a graphic (that can be downloaded). Then we go deep in with the direct and concrete experience of international teachers around Europe who implement an active learning method during the academic year 2019/2020 followed by reflections and theory told by eLene4Life experts. Taking part to activities are crucial in achieving the above listed intended learning outcomes: share opinions and reflections with colleague and trainers that come from company context would offer added values and hints to be considered while redesign the course.

You can access the course absolutely free of charge and completely online. The course materials will still be available to all registered users, even after the closing of the edition. Further editions of this course will be activated each academic year.