Perception and development of soft skills in Computing students: Experiences from the IFPB's EMBRAPII Capacitação 4.0 Program

Abstract

The work reports the experiences of the first cycle of the Capacitação 4.0 Program at the EMBRAPII Unit of the Federal Institute of Paraíba, which aims to support the development of soft skills through a Problem/Project-Based Learning (PBL) approach for students at the high school, undergraduate, and master's levels in Computing, focusing on applied research for the industry. The Soft Skills Matrix developed by EMBRAPII in partnership with Senai was used, encompassing ten competencies and their corresponding abilities, aligned with those highlighted by the World Economic Forum. The impact of the Capacitação 4.0 Program was continuously assessed, and after 12 months of monitoring, Soft Skills Radars were generated to show the evolution in the development of socio-emotional skills among the students, along with individual Learning Maps as evidence of their learning.