Innovative technologies for developing university students’ soft skills

Abstract

The study addresses the problem of developing university students’ soft skills through an integrated system of innovative educational technologies. The aim was to develop and experimentally evaluate a methodological system and pedagogical conditions for enhancing students’ soft skills in higher education. A four-stage pedagogical experiment was conducted from 2021 to 2025 and involved 387 university students, including 194 students in the experimental group and 193 in the control group. Students’ soft skills were assessed according to motivational, cognitive, activity, and reflective criteria and classified into four levels: low, reproductive, search, and creative. During the formative stage, the experimental group participated in an integrated intervention combining educational hackathons, project-based activities, simulations, business and role-playing games, professional discussions, digital collaboration tools, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and gamification. The results demonstrated substantially greater positive changes in the experimental group than in the control group. Mean scores in the experimental group increased by 0.62 points for the motivational criterion, 0.56 for the cognitive criterion, 0.76 for the activity criterion, and 0.68 for the reflective criterion. The overall pre–post difference in the experimental group was statistically significant (t = 12.192, p < .05). At the final stage, 57.73% of students in the experimental group demonstrated search or creative levels of soft skills development, compared with 42.49% in the control group. The findings indicate that participation in the integrated system was associated with greater improvement in university students’ soft skills than participation in regular educational activities.