Experiences with training in social skills: design and study of the effectiveness: a case study at the Faculty of Management of the Limburg University Centre

Abstract

In this article we discuss the design of our social skills course for management students at the Limburg University Centre. Social skills consist of three interrelated components: a cognitive, a performance, and an attitudinal component. Teaching frameworks are: Kolb's experiential learning model and the idea that learning happens in three iterative stages. We make use of different didactical approaches and interventions: theoretical lectures, discussion groups, supervized seminars and independent study tasks and activities. The social skills course lasts 30 hours and is spread over 10 weeks. We measure the effectiveness of the course on different levels, based upon four sources of information. For the reaction level we use evaluative surveys with open questions answered by the students at the end of the last class. For the measurement of the learning level we use a traditional exam and a questionnaire with a pre- and a post test and a control group. For the behavioural level, we check whether students keep thinking about their working points three months after the training. We can conclude that the goals on a cognitive level are met. However the most important contribution is at the attitudinal level, a positive effect on the learnability dimension. Since believing in learnability is indispensable to acquire and practise social skills, this is a very important finding. That 63% of our students explicitly state that they have made progress 3 months after the course shows that they put their beliefs into practice. These results will be applied in future training and research.