An evaluation of an international collaborative project on soft skills and entrepreneurial skills development
Abstract
A cross-border collaborative project involving 16 engineering students from a Malaysian
university and 16 social science students from a Thai university was implemented with the
objectives of enhancing the participants’ soft skills and entrepreneurial skills. The project
spanned over a period of 15 days, seven days in Malaysia and eight days in Thailand. The
arrangement was chosen to provide the opportunities for the participants to utilise their
acquired knowledge and to facilitate the generation of technology based innovative products
for marketing. The 32 students were divided into four teams of eight participants each with
four students from each institution. Each team was required to work on a business plan for
an ‘innovative’ product proposed by the team for seeking funding. Each team was supervised by
two facilitators, one from each university. In addition to writing business plan, the participants
also joined field trips to places of interest and visited manufacturing facilities. A questionnaire
survey and interview were conducted to gauge the achievement of the objectives. In general, the
data obtained have quite clearly indicated that the project activities had been able to enhance
soft skills, especially communication skills, English language proficiency, and most of all,
the confidence to use English. The participants had also indicated that they had improved
their business plan writing skills. The observation has lead the authors to believe that such
collaborative project can be used to supplement classroom teaching to develop students’ soft
skills and entrepreneurial skills.
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