Students' soft skills development based on interaction with training environment within e-learning

Abstract

The research is intended to provide an insight into the practice of soft skills development in the process of students’ interaction with e-learning environment. The discussion calls upon the subject developers for a review of both the strategies of soft skills selection and the principles of transforming training courses into e-format. The research is structured as follows: first, it reveals the ways of selecting a balanced optimal set of the university graduate’ soft skills on the basis of meta-level typology and individualization. Second, it identifies the principles of organizing efficient training activities aimed at the soft skills development that is based on modelling the existential (real life) situation of self-development. Third, it presents an example of the efficient training course transformation into e-learning format without losing its developmental capacity. It is worth noting that this paper provides an important source of information and creative ideas for e-learning courses aimed at soft skills development. The new normal caused by COVID-19 pandemic and student-centered paradigm of education requires a revision of the traditional higher education basics. The system-forming factor is the student as a holistic living system, which is self-developing and includes cognitive, communicative and regulatory functions. Traditional mainly cognitive goals were supplemented by the practical goals of soft skills development as important components of professional, social and existential competencies. Achieving this goal through the student-training environment interaction has gained additional capacity due to the unprecedented development of digital technologies. Modern challenges as well as technological opportunities have required multidisciplinary solutions. Solving a whole chain of interrelated problems has necessitated a system approach to ensuring efficient student interaction with the e-environment, which acquired additional developmental capacity through technology.