A Perspective from Vietnamese Students on Teaching of Soft Skills

Soft skills are significant to the engineering labour market, especially in Information Technology where demands are high on for instance communication skill, teamwork skill, presentation skill, etc. Despite their importance, educating students in using those skills is not fully included in the bachelor education programmes, especially in developing countries. This project aims to gain insights in how soft skills are taught in Vietnamese universities, and which skills are missing in their bachelor education programmes. The findings are intended to support education in order to develop the teaching of soft skills for Vietnamese students, and decrease the unemployment rate of Vietnamese graduates. In this project, semi-structured interviews, by e-mail, have been used to collect the data. There are eight Vietnamese interviewees who have experiences from various education programmes. The interview transcripts were then analysed and categorised into themes. The results of our work are a preliminary identification of missing skills in the undergraduate programmes, and a set of proposed skills that could be considered to improve the education programmes.