The Role of Co-Curriculum in Enhancing Students’ Soft Skills: Communication Skills

Abstract

This study attempts to highlight issues related to soft skills, namely communication skills among students of Universiti Utara Malaysia. Soft skills that include communication skills, problem solving skills, teamwork, leadership skills and social responsibility, are important elements that are highly emphasized and essential in addition to academic skills. The co-curriculum courses offered at ever public university in Malaysia, among others, aim to shape and develop the personality of students as well as provide them with various components of soft skills. Students with good soft skills will easily adapt to their working environment. Employers prioritize soft skills especially communication skills and social responsibility in employees’ selection sessions. Thus, this study was conducted with a major focus on communication skills.  The three objectives of this study are to identify the level of communication skills among UUM students; to identify the significance of co-curriculum courses in influencing students’ communication skills and to identify the role of attitude in improving communication skills among UUM students. The primary data were gathered using questionnaires distributed to UUM students who are undertaking co-curriculum courses. The data will then be analyzed using Structured Equation Model (SEM), as well as descriptive analysis. A communication indexes has also been developed to identify the level of communication skills among UUM students. The findings show that the communication index for UUM students were between 0.70 (lowest score) and 0.78 (highest score) and the average score is 0.74. The score is normal since the value is above 0.5. Both the independent variables; co-curriculum courses and attitude were positively significant in developing students’ communication skills in UUM at the significant level of less than five percent.