Sky 4.0 relies on Moodle for encouraging young talents in aerospace to improve their soft skills
Today, the learning process exploits a variety of electronic platforms, which, on the one hand, significantly increase the pool of students, but, on the other hand, hinder the development of soft skills, if the courses are not properly designed. Even more, the COVID-19 pandemic has suddenly accelerated this digital immersion.
Preparing students to face the challenges of the 21st century requires improving their soft skills by taking them beyond traditional classroom teaching and incorporating these values also in virtual learning. In the first instance, soft skills can be developed through active and interactive methods during in-class learning, but they should also be developed as well through well design interactive activities embodied in the electronics platforms that are currently part of the training and learning process.
To achieve this objective, we have built a kind of soft skills mentor supported by Moodle, to prepare young talents for the exciting yet challenging world beyond the technical subject studied in the classroom.
Moodle is a virtual learning platform that functions as a repository of course content and activities that can be used to teach soft skills. Moodle is one of these electronic tools commonly used for academic activities all around the world. It has become a standard, and students are well familiarized with it. Although up to now, Moodle has been mainly used for teaching and learning hard and technical skills, the synergies and scale factor of using Moodle for developing soft skills are huge.
This is not the first initiative promoting the development of soft skills supported by Moodle but it is the first one that concentrates on the soft skills required from future workers by industry 4.0. We are convinced that this approach to soft skills for young people will set the basis for future developments in this area.
