Student development and soft skills: IT-students at a university in South Africa

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to determine whether IT-students are aware of soft skills and the importance thereof, and to research the students perceptions on the importance and development of their own soft skills. More and more corporations recognize the importance of soft skills, but employers complain about a lack in soft skills among graduates from tertiary education institutions. This has significance for educational programs such as Computer Science (CS) and Information Systems (IS). A questionnaire was distributed electronically to the students doing IT-subjects at a university in South Africa. Quantitative research and qualitative research was done, as the researchers wanted to measure certain variables as well as understand the students own perceptions on the development of soft skills. Results of this study show that students feel most confident about their willingness to learn, their work ethic and their skill for self-management. They feel least confident about their skill for cross-cultural relationships, leadership, multi-disciplinary thinking, time-management and teamwork. Decision making was rated as the most important skill, followed by work ethic, positive attitude, communication skills and time-management. According to the respondents, cross-cultural relationships and interpersonal relations are least important. Comparisons show that the male students perceive their emotional intelligence as higher than the female students perceive their emotional intelligence, while first year and second year students perceive their conflict management and cross-cultural relationship skills as higher than the third and fourth year students perceive theirs