Antecedents of Soft-Skills in Higher Education Institutions of Saudi Arabia Study under COVID-19 Pandemic
Open accessAbstract
Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) play an important role in development of productive academic environment for university graduates. Similarly, soft skills are an essential requirement for fresh graduates to provide and prepare them for the convenient and suitable job market. In last few months, emerging situation of COVID-19 has affected the Saudi higher education sector at large scale from business perspective by diverting the regular studies to online classes. Online classes have made it more difficult for academic staff to cope up with this deteriorating situation. This study is planned to identify numerous soft-skills, which could be important to conduct academic activities under COVID-19 crisis. Study will make an analysis focusing on the importance of soft-skills in higher education institutions before and after the COVID-19 crisis. Study collected data from both public and private sector higher educational institutions located in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Study observed the key role and overall impact of soft-skills to enhance the learning aptitudes under uncertain COVID-19 situation. Study will also focus on the importance of soft-skills in job success in the Saudi job market for university graduates. Study will also focus on the importance of soft-skills integration in higher education curriculum. Study will help the decision makers to plan and prepare accordingly for developing academic environment to get better job opportunities in the competitive Saudi business organizations.
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The COVID-19 pandemic facilitated the transformation of online and blended learning models.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has facilitated the transformation of online and blended learning models”
From Mapping the Research Landscape: A Comprehensive Bibliometric Analysis of Self-Determination Theory in Higher Education (2024) · cites this paper as [28]
The Problem Statement (page not provided) says COVID-19 shifted regular studies to online studies, and the Abstract says classes moved online. Neither passage supports the claim about blended learning models. (LLM, conf=0.87)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredGlobal education shifted to online platforms during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“with global education shifting to online platforms during the COVID-19 pandemic [27], [28].”
From Mapping the Research Landscape: A Comprehensive Bibliometric Analysis of Self-Determination Theory in Higher Education (2024) · cites this paper as [28]
The Problem Statement says COVID-19 shifted regular studies to online studies using platforms such as Zoom and Moodle. The Abstract specifically describes that shift in Saudi higher education; the paper does not establish that education shifted online globally. (LLM, conf=0.82)
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Lin, C., Zhang, Y., Wang, L., & Wu, J. (2024) · Proceedings of the 2024 2nd International Conference on Information Education and Artificial Intelligence · doi:10.1145/3724504.3724576
- Authors
- Malik, A., & Ahmad, W.
- Affiliations
- King Abdulaziz University (SA)
- ORCID
- Ahmad, Waqar
- Venue
- Creative Education
- Publisher
- Scientific Research Publishing, Inc.
- Published
- 2020
- Volume
- 11
- Issue
- 07
- Pages
- 1152-1161
- ISSN
- 2151-4755 (ISSN-L)
- 2151-4771
- OpenAlex
- W3045678613
- Cited by
- 15
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2025: 1 · 2024: 4 · 2023: 5 · 2022: 2 · 2021: 2 · 2020: 1
- FWCI
- 3.79
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- diamond
- doi.org
- Locations
- Creative Education (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Education › Higher Education and Employability
- Social Sciences › Education › Social Skills and Education
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › Innovations in Education and Learning Technologies
- Keywords
- soft skills, higher education institutions, COVID-19 pandemic, online learning, university graduates, graduate employability, curriculum integration, university faculty, Saudi Arabia
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