Engineering undergraduates' perceptions of soft skills: relations with self-efficacy and learning styles

Engineering education literature shares a consensual vision of the importance of soft skills for every workplace. However, undergraduates may not be aware of soft skills importance for their future employment and professional development. This research examines how undergraduates rate their current proficiency in a range of soft skills, and how do they perceive its importance for future employment. It also explores relations between proficiency in soft skills and self-efficacy, a variable strongly associated with competent performance, and learning styles, in order to identify practical implications for the design of more effective skills development programs. (C) 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of The Association of Science, Education and Technology