Applied Soft Skills supported by FeedbackFruits
Bridge the gap between theory and practice—equip students with essential soft skills through immersive, hands-on experiences to drive professional success.
Author: Claudia Carrone, Digital Learning Manager, EDHEC
Claudia is a Digital Learning Manager at EDHEC’s Pedagogical Innovation Laboratory (PILab), driving the transformation of education. She blends technology and pedagogy to create dynamic, innovative and transformative learning experiences for students, teachers, and researchers.
What are applied soft skills?
The applied soft skills pedagogy is a teaching approach that emphasizes structured practice, iterative feedback, and real-world application to develop essential soft skills in business education. Rather than learning about soft skills in theory, students actively engage in hands-on practice, allowing them to refine their communication, teamwork, leadership, and adaptability in authentic business contexts. This hands-on approach ensures deep learning, skill retention, and direct professional applicability.
Why applied soft skills?
The applied soft skills pedagogy ensures that students develop and apply essential business skills through active practice, structured feedback, and real-world application. Research highlights that experiential and feedback-driven learning enhances soft-skill retention, improves teamwork effectiveness, and strengthens problem-solving abilities. By embedding these competencies into business education, this type of pedagogy bridges the gap between academic learning and professional readiness, preparing students to excel in dynamic work environments.
Authentic learning for lasting Soft Skills
Applying soft skills in authentic business contexts ensures that students engage more actively and take ownership of their learning. With structured practice and reflection, the Applied Soft Skills Pedagogy fosters deeper skill retention, adaptability, and professional readiness.
Haritha and Rao, 2024
A Holistic Approach to Professional Development: Integrating Kolb's Experiential Learning Theory for Soft Skills Mastery
Soft skills drive student success
Research shows that soft skills like goal setting, self-confidence, and social skills account for 34% of the differences in students' learning outcomes. By developing these skills, students become more motivated, adaptable, and better prepared for academic and professional success.
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Hungwei, 2018
Learning-related Soft Skills Among Online Business Students in Higher Education: Grade Level and Managerial Role Difference in Self-Regulation, Motivation, and Social Skill
Prepare career-ready graduates
Research shows that 30% of businesses struggle to hire graduates with essential soft skills. "Skillification"—embedding soft skills into curricula—is key to close this gap and better prepare students for the workforce.
Villegas, 2024
A Systematic Review of Research on Soft Skills for Employability. Advanced Education
How does FeedbackFruits support applied soft skills?
The applied soft skills pedagogy is built upon structured practice, iterative feedback, and active student engagement, all of which can be enhanced through FeedbackFruits Learning Design System.
By embedding collaborative peer interactions, self-assessment opportunities, and structured reflection into the learning process, educators can create dynamic, student-centered experiences that foster real-world skill application. FeedbackFruits enables this by facilitating feedback loops, promoting active participation, and providing insights into student progress, ensuring that soft skills development is continuous and measurable.
With learning activities that encourage peer evaluation, guided discussions, and interactive activities, FeedbackFruits helps educators design learning experiences where students actively refine their skills, engage in meaningful dialogue, and receive actionable feedback to improve performance in professional contexts.
By embedding collaborative peer interactions, self-assessment opportunities, and structured reflection into the learning process, educators can create dynamic, student-centered experiences that foster real-world skill application. FeedbackFruits enables this by facilitating feedback loops, promoting active participation, and providing insights into student progress, ensuring that soft skills development is continuous and measurable.
With learning activities that encourage peer evaluation, guided discussions, and interactive activities, FeedbackFruits helps educators design learning experiences where students actively refine their skills, engage in meaningful dialogue, and receive actionable feedback to improve performance in professional contexts.
Get started with applied soft skills pedagogy using our pre-made learning templates
These templates—designed by experienced educators—offer proven structures for implementing applied soft skills pedagogy. Simply select a template, customize it, and launch engaging activities in minutes.
Browse all templates
Applied soft skills, directly within your LMS
FeedbackFruits integrates seamlessly with your Learning Management System, making it simple to incorporate applied soft skills pedagogy activities into your existing courses. Whether you teach online, hybrid, or face-to-face, FeedbackFruits ensures that activating student participation is just a few clicks away—no additional overhead, no steep learning curve.
Explore our free resources about applied soft skills
Feedback and assessment in higher education
A comprehensive guide to help educators design assessment activities that built upon real-world application, active engagement, and collaboration
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What is authentic assessment?
This article introduces authentic assessment, an approach that engage students in authentic experiences and measure their performance.
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Deakin University implemented authentic assessment
At the Faculty of Science, Engineering and Built Environment, Dr. Gunning and her team implemented a 2-year long, multi-faceted project to prepare students for the world of work and encourage lifelong learning.
Read moreSee what FeedbackFruits learning activities can be used to support applied soft skills
Applied soft skills is hard. FeedbackFruits makes it easier.
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