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

needed contingency activities to be implemented as the student interest or focus waned.
There is no real comparable data or specific lessons this affected as each lesson plan was
received differently by each group within the pilot scheme and the same lesson did not fall
into these categories for more than 1 group. However, it was noticed by all staff involved
that the more practical the learning, the better the engagement by (and behaviour of) the
learners.
The students like the feedback they receive from tutors on their development and the
formal grading system is written evidence of their progress. Awareness of how their
problems and moods can affect their ability to behave appropriately at work/College has
been raised and 17 of the 50 full/part time students (34%) have come forward and asked for
additional support to help them develop coping strategies for these moods.
It is time-consuming for tutors to grade large numbers of students at one time and may be
difficult to sustain if other work pressures come up. Likewise, when more than one member
of staff engages with the learner, it is important for these staff to get together to discuss
each student before grading them (to get a common consensus) and this again is difficult to
facilitate due to other staff duties and commitments. If due importance and time not given
to the grading process, students can perceive it as a “numbers game” where they just
randomly choose a number rather than read the criteria that number is assigned to.
GR
Active participation throughout the lessons recorded both in the tutors and students
interviews.
Large amount of personal experiences interchange is reported from both tutors and
students.
Strong point includes:
Generally, increasingly active participation.
Share of experiences among students.
Strong team building among students.
Improvement of student – student and student – teacher relationships.
At some lessons student boredom was observed. Interviews shown that it mainly came from
the repetition of some subjects, seen as already been covered, having nothing new to offer.
SW
After a group discussion a part of the Learning Bytes selected based on the participants'
needs and interests and the tutors individual assessment. The students really enjoyed the
MASS programme, of course everybody didn’t like everything but they were active and
interested in the exercises and there were a lot of discussions.
The concept of the Soft Skills, MASS programme has, brought thoughts of behaviour among
the participants in a simple and good way. Using MASS measurement and assessment
methodology is considered a strength. The free use of the material and the opportunity to
discuss with tutors in other countries during the project is also a success factor.
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