Abstract
In the 21st century, to be successful at the workplace and to get their first job, potential employees must have both “soft skills” (“know how to be”) and “hard skills” (“know how to do”). The proposed Soft Skills Training Program (SSTP) combines multiple serious games to train future employees in four key soft skills that are most demanded by companies: intrapersonal, interpersonal, personal social responsibility, and organizational sustainability. These four MacroSoftSkills are subdivided into eight MesoSoftSkills and 21 MicroSoftSkills to establish a complete multilevel structure. The development of soft skills is measured before and after the training using five appraisal questionnaires and tests. The pilot project, aimed at young university and vocational training students, lasted 9 weeks and proved to be effective since the proposed aggregate indicators of soft skills development increased in value, with the results being different across soft skill, gender, and educational center. The contents and length of some of the training sessions should, however, be adjusted to further develop and improve the program.
Highlights
At the end of the 20th century, scientific and technological discoveries opened the door to a society characterized by globalization, high mobility of people and goods, digitalization, and evolving technical interconnectivity
We focus on the training of these soft skills, and we do so by designing a training program based on serious games, as they are an effective alternative [28,29] to motivate and stimulate learning in different settings [30,31]
We focus on measuring the effectiveness of the proposed training program by quantifying the degree of improvement in soft skills
Summary
At the end of the 20th century, scientific and technological discoveries opened the door to a society characterized by globalization, high mobility of people and goods, digitalization, and evolving technical interconnectivity. The main contribution is, a unique, comprehensive, measurable training program to improve the competencies in soft skills based on serious games With this idea in mind, and with the difficulty of designing such a complex measurable program based on multiple serious games, we resort to the so-called Deming cycle for continuous process improvement [38]. Even if this cycle was first thought of for measuring the continuous improvement of industrial processes, its applications are spread across different scientific disciplines (for example, [39,40]), even in designing training programs [41] We use it for the first time, to our knowledge, to design a training program on soft skills.
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
