Acquiring the skills of the future for the 4.0 environment is essential. These competencies are related to the constant changes in the modern world, such as economic crises, reflecting the unfolding of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (Piwowar-Sulej, 2021). Teaching projects, such as extracurricular activities, play a very important role in the development of competences. These activities are an efficient complement to education, allowing the development of a range of skills, such as communication and teamwork (Bodolica et al., 2021).

The educational projects must meet the current challenges and its objectives must be aligned with the requirements and needs of the educational institutions and the job market. The elaboration of projects based on Education 4.0 revolves around competencies, learning methods, information and communication technologies, and infrastructure. This new form is based on Education 4.0 for higher education, which seeks to train a highly competitive generation of professionals able to manage resources correctly, providing innovative ideas while facing the various current and future challenges (Miranda et al., 2021).

The current scenario has enlightened that the knowledge of technical skills, mostly already implemented in the undergraduate courses is not sufficient and needs to include socio-emotional skills. The graduated engineers, currently active in Industry 3.0 were trained based on analytical, logic and systematic knowledge, focusing on the problems, and understating the human-interactions side. These professionals usually find it easier to work in familiar, long-term teams (Piwowar-Sulej, 2021). The Industry 4.0 professionals must be open and active, receptive to work in a diverse team and perform different tasks.

The gap between the skills that contribute to employability, and the skills acquired during the engineering education has caused difficulties for future workers and graduates to meet the competitive global standards. Employability skills are necessary not only for obtaining a job, but also for developing potential and allowing progression in a company, contributing to an overall success (Moldovan, 2020).

Social-emotional skills are related to effective performance at work. An analysis of studies that investigate the effect of socio-emotional skills in successful cases suggest leadership as one of the most impacting competencies (Rezende et al., 2021). In addition, leadership is always mentioned alongside other competencies, such as networking, multiculturalism, communication and decision-making. This supports the argument that the separation of competencies in different groups is a powerful research instrument, but in the real scenario of universities and organizations, competencies must be treated in an integrated manner (Rezende et al., 2021).

Business schools have been offering courses on leadership for years, but these are usually traditional, classroom-based courses, focused on an overview of Leadership, and lack deepness in developing the socio-emotional skills necessary to exercise team leadership in industries (Corriveau, 2020).

The aim of this project is to improve the academia perception about the importance of teamwork and soft skills in general, aiding to overcome the idea that engineering is purely based on technical fields.

The important socioemotional competencies for the engineer, according to Campos (2019), can be divided into six core groups: Critical thinking; communication; teamwork; ethical perspective; emotional intelligence and creative thinking. Among these groups, teamwork was chosen for the study because it has been constantly identified as a gap in engineering courses (Campos, 2019). This skill can be subdivided into leadership, multiculturalism and networking. Therefore, the objective of this work is to carry out a training for the expansion of soft skills (worldwide known term in English for socio-emotional skills) teamwork, leadership, networking and multiculturalism for the industrial engineering center - mechanical qualification of CEPLAN/UDESC.

The present study has a practical character, according to Lakatos and Marconi (2021)’s classification of research aimed at obtaining practical application results. Still according to the authors’ classification, the approach to the problem is predominantly qualitative, as it is based on subjective and linguistic responses, which, for the purpose of this research, were treated with Bardin's Content Analysis (2015).

The practical application corresponds to the implementation of the proposed socio-emotional skills training within an engineering course. Regarding the technical procedures, it is a case study, as the participating actors belong to a specific and delimited group: Industrial engineering students with mechanical specialization from UDESC Planalto Norte (São Bento do Sul/SC).

Systematic bibliographic review (SBR)

This study was carried out based on data collected by a systematic bibliographic review (SBR), from May to July 2021. The scientific databases used were Scopus and Science Direct. The SBR was used to support the literature review through well-rated scientific articles from internationally recognized quality scientific bases. The objective was to survey the different forms of training and development of the soft skill teamwork and its subdivisions in Engineering: Leadership, Multiculturality and Networking, according to Campos et al. (2020). The  selected   keywords   and   their  derivatives   were:   Socio- emotional competences (soft skills); academic (academic, student); training (development, qualification); team (team, staff); leadership (leaders); networking (network); multiculturalism (multiculturality) and engineering. Through the defined words and their derivations, terms were combined, obtaining 24 different expressions, as illustrated in Figure 1.

The bibliographic survey was carried out using the Mendeley® software to collect and order the scientific articles. For visualization purposes, all the files obtained were input into Microsoft Excel®. Table 1 presents the results obtained from the systematic literature review for this study.

Following the SBR guidelines, after the first 14038 international articles were obtained, a second screening and refining stage was carried out. Conference documents and/or books, among other forms of publication other than scientific articles from journals, were excluded, as well as duplicates of each document. The grouping of the articles by the main soft skill 'Teamwork' and the subdivisions resulted in 1368 articles, from which 79 were related to teamwork, 489 to leadership, 17 to multiculturalism and 1069 to networking.

The final step was conducted reading all the titles and abstracts to select only the relevant articles, fully aligned with the research scope. In total, 33 articles were selected. These articles were grouped according to the topics listed in Table 2, which were used as basis to define the topics of the training meetings.

This step contributed to the entire application of the research, including the proposal development, the methodology and the elaboration of the questionnaires. The material used in the training was also based on the results obtained with the SBR and its references.

Research development stages

The core of the study was developed using four main items (Chiavenato, 2020): (1) Diagnosis, survey of the gap related to teamwork skills; (2) Design: elaboration of training to develop competencies and rectify identified deficits; (3) Implementation: application of the developed program;. (4) Evaluation: Analysis of the results obtained with the training.

The data for the diagnosis and evaluation stage were collected through an online questionnaire, in the pre- and post-completion stages of the activity, only from the students participating in the extracurricular activity developed. These data were treated qualitatively by content analysis, as proposed by Bardin (2015). The questionnaires were applied for diagnosis and for the final evaluation intended to evaluate the perception of improvement by the participants.

As data collection instruments, investigative questionnaires were used in the pre and post stages to evaluate qualitatively the participants' perception of their deficiencies in competence and if the proposed solution was effective. The questionnaires are found in Appendices A and B.

The levels for diagnosing and evaluating training questionnaires were inspired by Donald Kirkpatrick (Kanaane and Ortigoso, 2018), a pioneer in the development of training evaluation formats, focused on the training result. The levels are divided into: (1) Reaction; (2) Learning; (3) Behavior; and (4) Results, elucidated in Figure 2.

For the design stage, training and development (T&D) was done using the microlearning method,  which  provides  better  and  more effective learning by dividing the content into smaller parts, easier to understand and which also uses technological resource to increase access to learning (Filatro and Cavalcanti, 2018). This teaching format is well suited to informal learning, as it focuses on avoiding the cognitive overload of students, proposing that the content previously divided into smaller units, is applied in a short period of time. The purpose of microlearning is information retention (Filatro and Cavalcanti, 2018). This method fulfills the requirements for Education 4.0 in higher education, for being innovative, more didactic and complemented by new technologies (Miranda et al., 2021).

The implementation phase took place in meetings that lasted approximately 80 min each. The meetings were held at night via the microsoft teams platform; they were developed in two weeks, making a total of five meetings.

The presentation of content related to the topic of each meeting was divided into the first 20 min. Then, for the next 10 min they were asked to perform an activity unrelated to the topic to stimulate the mind, such as music, reading or physical exercise (Ferguson et al., 2017). The activities were available through provided links. The students returned to the content for another 20 min, in which the key information was reviewed, and the topic was discussed. Another 10-minute break was applied, and, in the last 20 min, the knowledge acquired was applied through activities and/or exercises (Ferguson et al., 2017). The format used in the training is illustrated in Figure 3.

The division of the topics of each meeting was carried out considering the predominant topics found in the Systematic Literature Review, as well as the objectives of this study: Training for the improvement of socio-emotional skills in Industrial Engineering students, as described in Section 3.1. After each meeting, a questionnaire was used to assess the improvement in learning about the meeting’s topic. Table 3 shows the date, topic, developed content and the referenced authors.

For the evaluation phase, the results obtained with the diagnostic and training assessment questionnaires were approached using Bardin's (2015) content analysis method. This method is divided into three stages: Pre-analysis, investigation of the material and data processing (inference and interpretation). In the pre-analysis stage, the scopes of the diagnostic and final assessment questionnaires were defined, using the levels established by Donald Kirkpatrick (Kanaane et al., 2018) which are reaction, learning, behavior and results.

This stage  related  to  the  diagnostic  and  design  phase  of  the training. For the investigation of the material, data are collected and examined, identifying the main keywords, acting in the implementation  of   the  training.  During  the  data  processing and interpretation, all the information was organized, and the analysis and inferences were performed, considering the main objective – the  development of the soft skills teamwork, leadership, networking and multiculturalism for industrial engineering students, concluding the evaluation part (Chiavenato, 2020). All steps and the correlation between them are shown more schematically in Figure 4.

Population and sample

The study population was Industrial Engineering - Mechanics Qualification course students, from the Center of Planalto Norte (CEPLAN) of the State University of Santa Catarina (UDESC). The sample consisted of twelve volunteers who signed up to participate in all training dates and meetings. No restrictions were imposed regarding age, gender or stage in the course. The required resources were equipment with internet access (mandatory), camera and microphone (optional) and availability to participate in all meetings at the specified time. The training was developed in remote mode given the COVID-19 pandemic at the time of the study.

Research application

The first phase of the study was a diagnosis of the deficit related to teamwork skills (Chiavenato, 2020). The survey was carried out through a structured questionnaire based on Donald Kirkpatrick's levels of reaction learning, behavior and results (Kanaane and Ortigoso, 2018) and information on the pre-analysis results of the SBR. The Diagnostic Questionnaire in Appendix A consists of twelve questions, seven of which are essays, and considered the satisfaction and importance of the course for the participants, the change in participants' attitudes, the expansion of their knowledge and skills and identification of change in their behavior as a result of learning, as well as characterization of the benefits and results obtained with the training (Kanaane and Ortigoso, 2018). All the twelve academics initially enrolled in the training answered the questionnaire, henceforth they will be identified by AC1, AC2, AC3, AC4, AC5, AC6, AC7, AC8, AC9, AC10, AC11 and AC12, for identity and data protection purpose.

After the application of the diagnostic questionnaire, the results led to the design, or the preparation of the training to develop skills and rectify the identified gaps (Chiavenato, 2020). The material developed for the five meetings addressed soft skills in Industrial Engineering and addressed individually the three subdivisions of teamwork  -  multiculturalism,    networking    and    leadership.  The implementation phase occurred between the third and fourth weeks of September 2021. The meetings started at 19:00 on each of the previously scheduled days and lasted 80 min, using the microlearning methodology (Filatro and Cavalcanti, 2018). At the end of each meeting, three to five questions were applied to assess whether the topic had been learned. During the implementation stage, only five of the twelve students initially enrolled participated in all the meetings.

After the training completion, the participating students responded to the final evaluation survey. The evaluation questionnaire in Appendix B is divided into eight questions, seven of which were essays. All information collected during the training through the questionnaires was addressed using Bardin's Content Analysis method (2015).

The data processing was followed by a statistical operations phase, in which two analysis formats were used: Selection and classification of keywords related to the main soft skills (leadership, multiculturalism, networking and teamwork), and other mentioned concepts with the frequency at which they had mentioned (Bardin, 2015). During the synthesis and selection of results phase, the best answers given in open questions were selected, evidencing the results found in the statistical operations. Table 2 was used as a basis to group the inferences from the theoretical framework that allowed the interpretation of the results (Bardin, 2015).

Question 2 "As an Industrial Engineering student, what is your view on socio-emotional skills in Engineering and how do they apply?" seeks to identify the students' perception of the topic and its applicability. Of the total responses, 41.7% responded that the topic has applicability in professional and personal development in general. About 25% of the responses identified that the topic applies to the areas of leadership and management, while 16.7% of the students identified that the applicability is greater  in  teamwork  and  communication areas; 16.7% did not know how to answer. The response of AC12 expressed how technical knowledge is overestimated in relation to socio-emotional knowledge and the impact in the career and the work environment: “As a student, I had a view that they were not as important as my technical knowledge; it is the technical knowledge that would bring the solution of problems or new ideas. But now, working, I see that you will hardly have the ideas for the problems alone. And the time you spend dealing with people (or with yourself) is extremely longer than the time you deal with technical information. In my case it is roughly 90% people to 10% technical. So today I see that these skills are extremely important to achieve a good performance at work”.

AC12’s comments highlight the discussion of professional development for Industry 4.0. Commonly, those already in the job market feel more connected to the analytical, logical and systematic side. This reflection is in line with  the  studies  of  Piwowar-Sulej  (2021), who stated that the student who graduates to follow aligned procedures, performs activities as established, in the correct way, focuses a lot on the problems, and sometimes underestimates the interpersonal side. Students who seek success in their career within the Industry 4.0 context must be receptive to the diversity of teams and complex activities.

The proposed training was evaluated through Questions 11 and 12 from the diagnostic questionnaires and Questions 6 and 7 from the evaluation questionnaire.

In the diagnostic phase, Question 11 “attribute value to the relevance of a training in socio-emotional skills in higher education:” with a scale from irrelevant to extremely relevant, allowed the academics to give their opinion on the relevance of the training before having the experience. About 41.7% identified it as extremely relevant; the rest were divided between relevant and very relevant. The results suggest that even lacking experience, students already felt the need to learn soft skills. The aim of Question 12 “And finally, what are your expectations from enrolling in this training?” was to verify the students’ expectation regarding the training. Around 66.7% mentioned learning and improvement, 16.7% mentioned objectives related to management and leadership and the other 16.7% had expectations related to their personal development. The answer of AC9: “Develop the socio-emotional skills that the disciplines in college did not allow - which I think are extremely important to develop and stand out in a work in engineering areas”, highlights both the lack of this content during higher education, and its importance for career development, justifying the need for training focused on the development of socio-emotional skills. 

In the final evaluation phase, Question 6 “As for the teaching method applied in the training, describe your experience” aimed to evaluate the teaching method from the participants’ point of view. The responses were all positive, and 60% classified the training as “very good”. AC2 and AC7 answered: “It was good, classes well explained, very efficient and not tiring” and “very good, the time was very well organized and used”, highlighting that the microlearning method, which uses breaks, brings interest in the class, and makes it more effective and less exhausting. Question 7 identical to Question 12 mentioned earlier and aimed to understand if the students’ point of view regarding the importance of learning soft skills changed after the training. 100% of the participants evaluated it as extremely important, which shows a clear impact of the training in the students’ point of view.

Bardin content analysis - descriptive statistics

The completion of the questionnaires followed the data processing phase with Bardin's content analysis.

According to the method, the sentences were used in full. All responses collected were organized in a spreadsheet for visualization purposes, and, with the results properly sorted, the stage of reading and identification of the main predispositions and contributions was carried out. This

step also identified the references given by each respondent connecting the explained ideas with the concepts listed by Campos (2019) as presented in Table 3.

As can be seen, the students listed competences beyond those that the study initially aimed to approach, although all the items are directly related to the four main proposals and to each other. This reinforces that learning and understanding these competences separately is not sufficient, as all of them are necessary both personally and professionally. The frequency analysis was developed based on a prevalence assessment, which evaluated the number of times each concept was mentioned by each respondent as shown in Table 1. The prevalence is shown in Table 4.

The global frequency allows understanding the most cited concepts, which were, consequently, developed more intensely in the applied method. The multicultural competence, mentioned 28 times, stands out. It is worth remembering that this competence brings the individual into a different cultural environment (Mafico et al., 2021). By learning how to work in a team, in a different method, with different people, the experience takes academics out of their everyday comfort zone.

The proposal of training in the EAD mode, using the microlearning learning method, including discussion, questioning and dynamics, caused greater interaction between students, creating a relationship in which each one shared and learned from others. Multiculturalism makes the team diverse, requiring collaboration and teamwork to deliver (Rezende et al., 2021).

The competencies of teamwork, leadership and networking were mentioned 19, 16 and 13 times, respectively. Some ideas proposed by the students include more than one competence. This shows there is a link between the competences.

The local prevalence analyzes the relationship between the ideas and the objective of the question. For this, Questions 1 to 5 from the diagnostic questionnaire were used. These questions evaluated the perception about how the training changed or affirmed their view on socio-emotional skills in engineering. Respondents also assessed the development or improvement in each of the core competencies of this study, in line with the research objectives. 

These questions were used to validate the efficiency of the training. The analysis of Figure 5 suggests an effective learning process, as lifelong learning and the main competences were predominantly mentioned in the study. When the result is compared with the answers from   the   diagnostic  questionnaire,  in  which  students should classify their difficulty level in each competence, as  shown   in   Figure   6,   the  difference  is  even  more pronounced.

Figure  4  summarizes the students’ self-assessment of their perception about each competence approached in the study. Most of the students evaluated their competences as well developed. However, at the end of the study, the students identified that there was still room for development. When compared to Figure 3, in addition to the requested competencies, lifelong learning was mentioned.

Bardin content analysis: Results synthesis and selection, inferences and interpretation

The choice of a specific topic within all the socio-emotional competences was to facilitate the validation of the training, evaluating its objectives of developing teamwork,  leadership,  multiculturalism  and   networking skills. However, the students expressed 13 other types of competences other than the ones initially targeted in this study. For example, when asked whether the training changed or affirmed their view about soft skills in Engineering, and how they  apply,  AC4  said:  “Yes!  The training helped me to  identify  some  skills  in  myself,  as some that already existed, but which I did not know how to name; they apply in teamwork, in being able to understand other problems within an environment, in various situations”. This answer indicates that the training met the students' expectations, fulfilling the research objective and providing a broader view of other skills.

This phenomenon can be explained by Campos (2019), who says that socio-emotional skills are interconnected, and when developing or working on one, the development of others, albeit on a smaller scale, invariably occurs.

Considering that the study aimed at developing a training to meet the current challenges within the contextof Education 4.0, the objectives remained aligned with the requirements and needs of the educational institution and the job market. The four pillars of this new educational format are competencies, learning methods, information and communication technologies, and infrastructure (MIRANDA et al., 2021). They were achieved with the content of competencies, learning method (Microlearning), a means of technological education (remote, via Microsoft Teams), with adequate infrastructure and accessible to students. The proposal of Education 4.0 in higher education is to apply new teaching methods, more didactic and innovative, linked to technology (MIRANDA et al., 2021). The following feedback about the training was obtained: “It was a very constructive meeting, different experiences with people, a dynamic meeting, the speaker was patient and very communicative, an incredible meeting and I really enjoyed the breaks so we could connect with other thoughts” (AC12); and “The methodology actually helps the context assimilation, the examples covered are easy to understand and the exercises help to visualize the Soft Skills in daily practice” (AC4). The training format provided the development of the skills necessary for the Industry 4.0 professional.

The main objective of this study-to develop and implement a training to expand socio-emotional, specifically Teamwork-related skills - was achieved, as demonstrated by the results and the participants' perception about the relevance and comprehension of these skills. In addition to these competencies, fourteen others were identified in the responses of students who voluntarily agreed to participate in this study.

The training structure developed considering three base authors, Bardin, Chiavenato and Donald Kirkpatrick and their respective methodologies, proved to be effective. The grouping of ideas from the three authors allowed a new format to be developed, enabling students to learn efficiently. The training and research format was based on the author Chiavenato, renowned in training and development techniques in administration. The questionnaires were structured considering the references of the diagnostic and evaluation levels of Donald Kirkpatrick, a pioneer in the development of training evaluation formats; they focused on the results and feedback. The data processing was carried out with Bardin's content  analysis,  which  allowed  to  adequately qualify each result and response obtained throughout the research, avoiding a superficial validation. Furthermore, the application of the microlearning method, which divided the content into smaller, easier to understand parts, brought a new experience to the students.

The training also compared the challenges of remote teaching during the pandemic with face-to-face courses, based on the classroom system with live explanations. It can be challenging to keep the attention of the public used to the face-to-face method, which is the reason why the Microlearning method was chosen, breaking the content explanation into smaller periods of time with pauses.

This training format was, according to the students’ informal reports, innovative and stimulating. Innovative teaching encourages not only students’ participation in class, but also enables better understanding of the content. In the current information era, in which information is widely and immediately available, teaching methods need to be revised and should be capable of stimulating participation and attention.

The training also influenced the students' self-knowledge. At the beginning of the research, the vast majority identified themselves as having easiness with most of the competences, but as the course progressed, each student gained a broader view of each competence and how they could expand their knowledge. Many who had initially identified themselves as good leaders did not know how to identify different types of leadership in class, and those who claimed easiness with multiculturalism did  not to know how to define the competence.

During the training application, there was a significant dropout rate, justified by the participants due to the COVID-19 pandemic and its influence in personal life. As future suggestion, it is interesting to carry out the same course in a face-to-face format to compare the integration between the participants and the exploration of the competences. According to the informal and formal indications of the students, it is relevant to study a possibility of integrating this content with technical subjects, for the professional development for Industry 4.0 to be more effective.

It is also worth mentioning that an academic training must be continuous, as it is not possible to learn all the technical content aligned with the socio-emotional skills during the 5 years of universities. Lifelong learning must be one of the goals of engineering professionals inserted in Industry 4.0.

Finally, the applied and structured method fulfilled the expansion of the teamwork skills for engineering students; it promoted the development of these skills, and provided a teaching method that stimulated the students and allowed an effective learning. Students responded to the entire survey with enthusiasm for learning, providing insights about their perceptions and highlighted the need for ongoing training that possibly  connects  the  technical skills with the socio-emotional development.

The authors have not declared any conflict of interests.