Teaching and Assessing Soft Skills - MASS - Measuring and ...

3.1 Comparison with the general target group: Is an indicator whether the MASS
target group might be representative of the institutions’ target group.
3.2 Statistical Indices: Demographics of the MASS students (age, gender,
employment etc).
3.3 Socio-economic factors: Some quality of life factors (poverty, crime, drug
abuse etc.) that might correlate with the success of the MASS approach. The
original SkillZone target group was a disadvantaged one. We want to estimate
whether the degree of success of MASS approach depends on the degree of
disadvantage of the target group.
4 Selection procedure: The rationale behind the partners’ choice of selecting the specific
group. Sub topics about why and how the selection had been made are included.
5 Initial Soft Skills Assessment: Feedback about the method and the result of the initial
MASS students’ soft skills assessment, to serve as a basis of comparison with the
results after the courses. Sub topics for the process of initial evaluation and why
partners think their target groups needed more soft skills training are included.
6 Progress Assessment: In this section we assess the quality of process during MASS
courses. The assessment is mainly qualitative. As indicators student involvement and
narratives of successes and failures are used. Additional means of assessment, chosen
by each partner, are used in order to evaluate the strong and weak points of the
process.
7 Final assessment: In this section partners are requested to give results of the final
assessment.
7.1 Assessment Targets: All the usual educational assessment targets were
included, namely learning materials, student progress, teachers’ point of
view, relationships among students and among students and teachers. In this
sub-section, partners were requested to give the results of the relevant
assessments.
7.2 Criteria: If partners’ criteria for the final assessment were different from the
ones in section 2.2, partners were requested to elaborate further.
7.3 Method(s) description/application/results: This section is meant to include a
detailed description of the final assessment method(s), its/their application
and results.
7.4 Rate of attendance/Dropout rate: This criterion is inherited from SkillZone,
which achieved a low dropout rate. Its intention is to explore whether MASS
courses have the same effect in the other partners institutes. It may not be
relevant for some partners.
8 Discussion/Results: Partners were requested to evaluate their results, elaborate on the
impact of the courses, develop possible explanations and make suggestions for further
improvement. Subsections with specific targets are included.
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