Learning Soft Skills Research Articles

CHALLENGES AND SOLUTIONS TO IMPROVE THE INTEGRATING SOFT SKILLS INTO TEACHING SPECIALIZED KNOWLEDGE IN UNIVERSITIES

The paper discusses about the importance of soft skills to some students activities such as finding jobs, starting a business; the necessity as well as the challenges of integrating soft skills into teaching specialized knowledge at universities and colleges. In addition, the author proposes some solutions to improve the effectiveness of the application of training models, contributing to raising students’ awareness of the importance of learning soft skills - the key to success in the future.

THE IMPLEMENTATION TEACHING FACTORY AND IMPLICATIONS ON THE PREPARATION OF CANDIDATES FOR VOCATIONAL HIGH SCHOOL TEACHERS

Purpose of Study: Along with the development of science and technology, significant Become preparing qualified gradu- ates in the working world, Including for the graduates of vocational senior high school. In accordance with the Law of the Republic of Indonesia No.20 / 2003 on National Education System, the purpose of vocational education is to prepare stu- dents to be ready to work in Certain fields. Meanwhile, According to Regulation 32/2013 National Standard of Education, the vocational education intended to increase of the intelligence, knowledge, personality, moral, as well as the skills to live independently and to have further education in parallel with previous education.
 Based on the direction of vocational education policy as described, Several questions were drawn as follows: 1. What is meant by teaching factory ?; 2. What is the teaching-learning purpose of teaching factory ?; 3.What benefits will be gained by implementing a teaching factory ?; 4.What do the strengths and weaknesses of the teaching factory?; and 5.What are the implications of the Institute of Education and the Workforce, especially in the preparing of vocational senior high school teachers?
 Methodology: From the study to the related literature and relevant researches, it can be concluded that: 1The basic principle of teaching factory is the experience integration of working in the school curriculum, where all the equipment, materials and education subjects were designed in order to carry out the production process. This process Aimed to produce the goods/services, and reliable and competent graduates. 2 Though there were thirteen performance indicators, many Efforts were needed in order to fully implement the teaching factory in Senior Vocational High School environment, According to concepts, objectives and benefits, Including pre14 paring qualified senior vocational high school teachers; 3. In the evaluation of teaching factory activity in Surakarta, Fajaryati in 2012 found that in terms of learning activities, the implementation of teaching factory was well-run, whereas the aspect of the production process, did not run as expected; and 4. Reorientation and revitalization of the Education and Workforce Education curriculum roommates were in line with the demands of users graduates, especially in the faculty of engineering were required.
 Results: Benefits of teaching factory, in principle, is aware of the students, that in the mastery of skills, not enough to just practice soft skills in learning, work in teams, and training interpersonal communication skills, but also have to realize the knowledge directly and exercise work to enter the working world significantly.
 Implications/Applications: The basic principle learning factory is the integration experience of working in the school curriculum, where all the equipment, materials and education actors, designed to make the production process in order to produce goods/services, as well as Vocational High School graduates who are competent/reliable.

Dual Education: The Win-Win Model of Collaboration between Universities and Industry

The purpose of this paper is to describe the new experiences of the dual training model in engineering education in Hungary. This new model has been introduced recently in the higher education and has become a focus of interest. This is a fa-vorable program for the students to experience the real industry environment pri-or to graduation and it is a good tool to motivate them to study harder. The dual education students study in the institutional academic period together with the regular full-time students at their higher education institute, and parallel to their academic education they participate in the practical training. It gives the students an opportunity to join a specific training program at an enterprise. Being involved in specific "operational" practical tasks and project-oriented work enhances inde-pendent work, learning soft skills and experiencing the culture of work. Our ob-jectives are to analyze the benefits of the dual training for all three parties: the stu-dent, the company and university. The study confirms earlier results from prior studies which show, for example, that students who choose the dual option achieve better program outcomes.

Teaching and learning soft skills in university physics courses: Perspectives of the UEA Higher Colleges of Technology

Teaching soft skills in engineering and technology courses have been part of ABET’s accreditation criteria for several decades. Much research has been done and recommendations have been made on how to modify engineering courses with the appropriate objectives and course delivery strategies towards successful and effective implementation of the ABET’s criteria. Research linked to teaching soft skills to future engineers in physics courses are rare and this paper contributes to this field. The role and place of physics courses in meeting ABET’s criteria are important for several reasons that are discussed in this paper. The main reason lies in the fact that basic knowledge and skills related to students’ professional development are better taught and practiced at an early stage and then developed through upper-level engineering courses. In this paper, we discuss the opportunities we currently have in our physics courses. We provide a plan on how to strengthen our students’ basic soft skills and what needs to be done to bring our physics courses in line with the HCT 2.0 vision. Several possibilities have been discussed in terms of course work, projects, labs, assignments, and assessments. The paper argues that there is no need for a big investment. We will require school support in training teachers and modifying physics course outcomes. A few suggestions written on “how to do it” are provided in the conclusion.

Key Soft Skills Influencing the Employment Decision of the Employers

This study examines the key soft skills affecting employment decisions among the employers of Dhaka city. After examining 10 key soft skills, 4 soft skills such as good communication skills, problem-solving skills, working well under pressure and comprehension/thinking skills have been observed significantly influencing the employment decisions of the employers of Dhaka city. Factor analysis has been used to identify the most significant skills influencing employment decision. Correlation is also used to identify the most highly correlated skills. Simple descriptive statistics has been used to measure the degree of influence of the soft skills. General Linear Model is also used to examine the differences of employment decision making depending on the soft skills. Non probability random sampling has been considered as a sampling technique for collecting data. Sample size for this study is 201 respondents, 152 respondents from private organizations and 49 respondents from government organizations and 209 respondents from business graduates. It has also been identified that business graduates are aware of such soft skills like good communication skills and multiple choice fashions are the most significant method of judging these soft skills and training is the most influential method of measuring the improvement in learning soft skills. Business students should be assigned relevant tasks for mastering soft skills and also more and more practice of soft skills should be incorporated to the curriculum so that business students could make themselves competent enough to compete in the job market as far as soft skills are concerned and also would be able to meet the requirements of the concerned workplace and hence turn the employment decision in their favor positively and significantly.

Learning soft skills the hard way: Historiographical considerations on the cultural adjustment process of German-speaking émigré neuroscientists in Canada, 1933 to 1963

ABSTRACTThis article is a historiographical exploration of the special forms of knowledge generation and knowledge transmission that occur along local cultural boundaries in the modern neurosciences. Following the inauguration of the so-called “Law on the Re-Establishment of a Professional Civil Service” in Nazi Germany on April 7, 1933, hundreds of Jewish and oppositional neurologists, neuropathologists, and psychiatrists were forced out of their academic positions, having to leave their home countries and local knowledge economies and traditions for Canada and the United States. A closer analysis of their living and working conditions will create an understanding of some of the elements and factors that determined the international forced migration waves of physicians and clinical neuroscientists in the twentieth century from a historiographical perspective. While I am particularly looking here at new case examples regarding the forced migration during the National Socialist period in Germany, the analysis follows German-speaking émigré neurologists and psychiatrists who found refuge and settled in Canada. These individuals form an understudied group of refugee medical professionals, despite the fact that the subsegments of refugee neurologists and clinical psychoanalysts in the United States, for example, have been a fairly well-investigated population, as the works of Grob (1983), Lunbeck (1995), or Ash and Soellner (1996) have shown. This article is primarily an exploration of the adjustment and acculturation processes of several highly versatile and well-rounded German-speaking physicians, who had received their prior education in neurology, psychiatry, and basic brain research. They were forced out of their academic home institutions and had to leave their clinical research fields as well as their disciplinary self-understanding behind on the other side of the Atlantic.

Nature and Importance of Soft Skills in Software Project Leaders

Indian software industry experienced a phenomenal growht throughout 1990s. In spite of worldwide recessionary trends in the software industry, Indian software industry is expected to play a much bigger role in the new millenium for the growht of Indian economy. In the light of the research findings that lack of soft skills is one of the key reasons for the high rate of failure of information systems projects, this study assesses the difficulties experienced by project leaders in executing projects and the need for learning soft skills. Through role diagnostic workshop of Indian software professionals and in-depth interviews of various stakeholders, the study identifies various soft skills required by software professionals in leadership position. They need to have self-related soft skills, leaadership and managerial skills, knowledge and skills related to business domain, customers, project and process management and organisational and role related. The findings are discussed in a larger context of why technical professionals are reluctant to occupy managerial positions and the impact of lack of soft skills in leaders and team members on project success.

Learning soft skills

A US based centre aims to teach students how to improve consultation and communication skills

Teaching Management at Technical Universities, Business Reality in the Academic Environment

Students of technical universities often do not understand why their studies should include learning management skills (in addition to the study of economics). However, not only the experience of graduates but also the requirements of their future employers show that education in the field of the management should provide training, skills and practical testing. It is only a matter of time before graduates of technical university take up leading positions or become part of a team working on some complicated technical problem. A classical technical education is no longer sufficient and, aboveall, it is employees with knowledge of economics and with managerial skills, specifically soft skills that come to the fore. It is evident from ample experience that people’s individual dispositions play a role in learning soft skills, but many of these skills can also be acquired by progressive training. The question is which form of teaching to choose to enable necessary skills to be learned, without at the same discouraging students by offering them potentially unattractive courses. These are the issues that will be treated in this paper.

Application of Genetic Algorithms in Stock Market Simulation

Development of stock market is affected by many factors. It is difficult to predict changes in prices of stocks because of many parameters in behavioral algorithms. There is also problem with learning soft-skills because of many variables. Application of genetic algorithms can help find suitable pre-set of behavioral patterns, functions and its parameters. In this paper we describe creation and implementation genetic algorithms to existing multi-agent simulation. This existing simulation provides basic model of simulation of stock market members behavior. The main goal of this article is describe how to implement genetic algorithm into this type of simulation. The main advantage of using genetic algorithms is dynamically created decision process or function of each agent. Article describes process of creating decision, simulating behavior of agents which decision algorithm was created by genetic programming. Next point is to show, how can be this implementation of genetic algorithms used in learning process of simulation.

Nature and Importance of Soft Skills in Software Project Leaders

Indian software industry has had a phenomenal growth since the last decade of the twentieth century. Indian software industry is expected to play a much bigger role in the new millenium in the growth of Indian economy. In the light of the research findings that lack of soft skills is one of the key reasons for the high rate of failure of information systems projects, this study assesses the difficulties experienced by Indian IT project leaders in executing projects and the need for learning soft skills. Through role diagnostic workshop of Indian software professionals and in-depth interviews of various stakeholders, the study identifies various soft skills required by software professionals in leadership position, such as self-related soft skills, leadership and managerial skills, followed by knowledge and skills related to business domain, customers, project and process management. The findings are discussed in a larger context of why technical professionals are reluctant to occupy managerial positions and the impact of lack of soft skills in leaders and team members on project success.

Learning Soft Skills at Work

Learning Soft Skills at Work