Action learning: challenges that impact employability skills

The purpose of this paper is to assess the perceived value of an action learning experience (i-Week) on the development of important soft employability skills applying expectation confirmation theory (ECT).

A total of 1,295 activities were offered in 36 cities of ten countries. Each activity had a faculty member and multidisciplinary teams to address an authentic situation during one full-time week. The ECT was applied to assess the disparity between what was expected from the students and their actual learning experience. A total of 929 students answered a Perceived Value Questionnaire to measure 14 transversal competences categorized on five employability skills.

Achievements were statistically higher than expectations in 5 out of 14 transversal competences. The perceived value of the i-Week reflects the impact on soft skills: self-skills, personal, learning, social and systemic. The paper proposed an integrated model to learn these competences from action learning experiences.

The questionnaire is a self-assessment and not an actual performance measure. Besides transversal competences, there were more disciplinary competences that are not included in the study.

The perceived value model of the i-Week could be applied for different educational levels and contexts considering a lower scale. A new version of the Perceived Value Questionnaire on Competences is provided for educational research.

The educational experience, instruments and analysis described in the study might be easily transferred to other action activity used to measure perceived learning results on multiple skills.