An enquiry into digital soft and hard skills

EdTech students
Jan 16, 2018
3 min read

Updated: Jan 29, 2018

During the last few decades there has been a heated controversy about whether soft- or hard skills are more important in the 21st century, but what are soft and hard skills in the first place and why should you care?

By Pascal Kolbe

16 Januar 2018

Hard skills is the technical side of your skillset. Do you know how to swing an axe to fell a tree? Do you know how to ride a car? Soft skills on the other side are less tangible. It’s more about your attitude and the way you approach a topic. This includes your character qualities, the way you communicate and how you solve problems.

In the digital era this discussion has shifted towards the new digital soft and hard skills.

In the past people focused on acquiring digital hard skills to display on their CV, like their knowledge of Excel, Word and the Internet. But in recent years proponents for digital soft skills argue that we are long past this age and that if you want to thrive in today’s innovation-driven economy digital hard skills are only seen as the bare basis, while it becomes more and more about your ability to use your soft skills within a technology-rich environment. These skills are then adeptly called digital problem solving or digital focus. They propose that people who are able to employ these soft skills in all parts of their life will be able to excel in these abilities and thus will be better qualified for the job market, while people who are unable to use digital soft skills will become more and more obsolete for the labour market of the future. Modern-day skilled jobs focus on solving unstructured problems and on efficiently processing huge amounts of information to make educated decisions. In contrast to this we need to see the reality of the current labour market, where only 6% of American adults are highly proficient in problem-solving in technology-rich environments. What does this mean for your future in the labour market. It means that if you are one of these self-taught 6%, that are able to fully utilize their soft skills within modern environments you have a good chance of being employed in the future.

What does this mean for the system as a whole?

It demonstrates that the schools of the future need to focus more on teaching children how to build their digital soft skills and thus function more effectively in technology-rich environments. This could be done by finding ways to responsibly use technology in schools. Employing technology in schools could also lead to a wide range of other benefits. Next to being more engaging for the students, well-designed pedagogical aids could help close the gap in skill development between developing and developed countries, for example, by supporting regions that have a low number of well-trained teachers and by reducing some of the pressure that is put on these teachers by giving them effective tools that free up their time from things such as grading and testing of students. Technological tools also give researchers insights into what students learn in real time and gives them greater and more reliable data to work with to advance their research. These tools, optimized by research, could also be scaled up easier, which could allow for an international exchange of best practices, reducing inequity and ultimately benefitting everyone involved.