E-LEARNINGS FOR SOFT SKILLS IN TECHNICAL UNIVERSITIES

Abstract

POLITEHNICA UNIVERSITY BUCHAREST - FILS - CCLM Splaiul Independentei No 313, Bucharest, Romania, danaurs2002@yahoo.com Abstract: Most technical universities in the western world have already included the soft skills in their educational programs as a priority, although their main educational focus is still on developing the technical / hard ones. The interest of the Romanian educators towards developing the soft skills is, however, in its infancy. Even if these have become the main topic of the courses in communication taught lately, the methodology used is still according to the classical "ex-cataedra" pattern of teaching. One could add to this the almost total neglect of some basic components of the soft skills, viz. those dealing with the student's personal development, self- awareness, self control, perception of oneself and of the other etc.Among the possible reasons could be that their teaching has an interdisciplinary character that challenges teachers to enlarge their strictly linguistic domain and include new items like improving self awareness, increasing self-fulfillment and satisfaction, releasing psychological blocks, releasing stress etc. On the other hand, students, who are open and interested in such training, have never been exposed to organized educational systems of soft skills such as self-awareness. The present paper aims, therefore, at suggesting ways of using some possible e-learning based techniques for developing the so far ignored aspects of soft skills acquisition by the students of technical universities. The ideas underlying the chains of original tasks which have been created are based on the research conducted by the author and several foreign language teachers in the Politehnica University of Bucharest.