Soft Skills' Evaluation in Textile Engineering and Design

There is a growing awareness of the importance of higher education to produce highly skilled graduates that will be able to respond to complex needs of their workplace. The aim of this study is to gain insight into the perception of students to the soft skills that are important for their future profession and successful entrance into the labour market. Furthermore, the intention is to compare the perception of soft skills' importance among three different student groups that study at the same faculty, according to quite different curricula and their own current soft skills. Introduction There is a growing awareness of the importance of higher education to produce highly skilled graduates that will be able to respond to complex needs of their workplace [1-3]. The concerns have been expressed regarding the gap between the hard skills and soft skills that students obtain during their education [4]. Therefore, the significant effort in a number of studies is given to the popularisation and recognition of soft skills. Soft skills are extremely important due to the fact that they help people to adapt and behave positively so that they can deal effectively with the challenges of their professional and everyday life. There is a number of existing projects dealing with soft skills, either among students, participants of VET or employed/unemployed individuals. The project ModEs [5] indicates relevant weaknesses in the reform of the curricula in order to tailor them with the requests coming from the labour market. On their opinion, one of ways to increase the soft skills among students is to develop a prototype of serious games on soft skills. The project MASS [6] outlines importance to use different approaches. According to the named project, it was very important for each partner to use the assessment method that best suites the group. A variety of approaches were collected, which can be used as a base for an adaptable system for many types of institutes and audiences. The results of survey in project E-QUA [7], that maps the various models of mobility in Europe, give exact situation regarding the soft skills on European universities. It was shown that only eight out of twenty-eight universities offer a soft skills development programme. All of them provide the development programme for both local students and incoming mobility students. The developed skills are mostly operative skills, intellectual/practical/relational/managerial skills, personal skills and thought skills. Furthermore, only 50% of incoming mobility students receive a formal acknowledgment of the soft skills programs that could be recognized once back in their home country. In the project „Soft skills improving professional competence and management“ [8] is also defined a significant lack of training in soft skills. At the same time, if they exist, they are too expensive or physically out of reach of most SMEs. Therefore, the authors realized the importance of delivering a full range of training materials for free to as many European organizations as possible that can be used to improve the skills of European professionals. From their experience, it is useful to unit grouped materials by module/group of skills they belong to. The project DAISS [9] also supported many unemployed adults in 6 EU countries to gain greater self-awareness in terms of their soft skills. They also supported recognition of the need to develop these skills and competences to meet the needs of an increasingly competitive labour market. As a result of project activity, is evidenced a number of new collaborations where VET providers and employers have worked together. Project NESSIE [10] brings up a list of poor skills that are linked to a range of labour market problems: high staff turnover/difficulty recruiting (particularly in the young), lack of ability to compete, inability to cope with change, reasons for staff dismissal and problems in school. In the CREDNET project [11], that deals with accreditation of managerial skills, is defined one major common problem among partner countries: the absence of a comprehensive national policy for the certification of skills acquired through non-formal and informal learning. As far as these certifications are not recognised by other states, similar initiatives would remain pilot. The analysed countries (Greece, Italy, Rumania, Latvia, Cyprus, Poland, Slovenia) don’t have very well-established systems for validation of non-formal and informal learning, but they have recently introduced appropriate measures, or are in the process of doing so. The aim of this study is to gain insight into the perception and attitude of students to the soft skills that are important for their future profession and successful entrance into the labour market. Furthermore, the intention is to compare the perception of soft skills' importance among three different student groups that study at the same faculty, according to quite different curricula. Method In the survey participated the following three groups of students of master’s degree levels at the University of Zagreb, Faculty of Textile Technology:  textile technologists (dominantly technical courses in their programme),  textile designers (dominantly artistic courses in their programme) and  industrial designers (both technical and artistic courses in the programme). The research instrument questionnaire was developed. It consisted of 14 questions. The aim of the survey was to gain insight into the perceptions of the most important soft skills for the future employment in the domain of textile technology and design. For the preparation of questionnaire were used the outcomes of previous projects, regarding the list of most important soft skills [5, 6]. In the questionnaire is included set of 30 personal, social and methodological soft skills and students were asked to rate their perception of importance of each listed skill for the success in employment and work. For the questionnaire was used bipolar 5 level Likert scale with following responses: 1strongly disagree, 2disagree, 3 neither agree nor disagree, 4 agree, 5 strongly agree. In the first section of questionnaire, respondents were also asked to provide personal information regarding their socio-economic characteristics (age, gender, school they completed before enrolment at University, etc.), their work experience, current employment status, hobby, foreign language knowledge, driving license and awards. Statistical analysis was made in software STATISTICA conducting methods of descriptive statistics for socio-demographic answers and for questionnaire questions/answers. Two questions encompassed same 30 sub questions/variables. The set of 60 manifest variables was analyzed using 5-point Likert-type scale, so that this paper brings insights into the basic antecedents of soft skills by selected population. Further, multivariate data analysis, i.e. first factor analysis (FA) is proceed separately over two criteria questions, and then with 60 variables (soft skills) to examine the variables. It should be mentioned here that, because of relatively small sample size, the final results are going to be just indicative. Findings and Discussion Socio-demographic characteristics of the convenient sample consisted of MA design students, studying in academic year 2013/2014. , at University of Zagreb, Faculty of Textile Technology, are shown at Table 1. Table 1. Frequencies and percentages of socio-demographic characteristics of the sample Survey question Variable Frequency Percentage Study module-group textile technologists 5 15,63 industrial designers 5 15,63 textile designers 22 68,74 Age of respondents 21 2 6,25 22 5 15,63 23 12 37,50 24 6 18,75 25 5 15,63 26 2 6,25 Gender female 32 100,00 male 0 0,00 School finished professional school 16 50,00 gymnasium 13 40,63 art high school 3 9,38 Professional school service occupation 10 31,25 manufacturing occupation 4 12,50 missing specification 2 6,25 Work experience yes 29 90,63 no 3 9,38 Current work status student unemployed 28 87,50 student employed 1 3,13 student – part time jobs 3 9,38 Hobby yes 11 34,38 no 21 65,63 Type of hobby practicing aerobic 1 3,13 drawing 3 9,38 making art jewellery 1 3,13 sport 5 15,63 sewing and drawing 1 3,13 Number of foreign languages one foreign language 29 90,63 two foreign languages 3 9,38 Foreign languages English 32 91,43 German 1 2,86 French 2 5,71 Driver's license yes 28 87,50 no 4 12,50 Awards or reworded result yes 1 3,13 no 31 96,88 The average grades given by three groups of students (technologists, industrial designers and designers) are shown on the figure 1. Fig. 1. Average grades on Likert scale given by three groups of students (technologists, industrial designers and designers) The results of the survey indicated differences in the perception of most and least important soft skills among different groups of students. Regarding the definition of skills which all students consider most important for employment and work (graded with highest rate by all students in the group), students of textile technology indicated a majority of skills – life-balance, self-awareness, professional ethics, criticism, commitment, decision making, efficient time organisation skills, planning, proactivity, creativity, contact network, leadership, teamwork, customer/user orientation, negotiation, verbal ability, writing ability and communication. In contrast to this, textile designers indicated only one important soft skill – creativity. Students of industrial design indicated three methodological soft skills – commitment, life balance and culture adaptability. Regarding the skills that are considered least important, the students of textile technology did not point out at any. The interesting fact is that textile designers indicated a number of skills, mainly those that were indicated as most important by textile technologists. Industrial designers pointed out leadership, management