Transferable skills of undergraduates of sciences and arts at Taibah University, El-Ula Branch, Saudi Arabia

Abstract

Transferable skills constitute a principle element in the curriculum of all educational programmes. Some human skills are transferred with birth in genetic factors, but these skills need to be discovered and developed: university teaching programmes are the main source to teach and develop these skills. This study is designed to explore the skills abilities of undergraduates as they see themselves and their abilities. Students showed great variation in skills abilities in the seven studied skills; they showed high ability for teamwork, communication, personal and development skills. Second-year students seemed more skilful than those of the first year. Women were highly skilled relative to men, the difference mostly being how wide the gap is between women and men in the seven categories of skills. When we compared Arts and Science students in these skills, there were significant differences between them, mainly in that science students were more skilful in information technology and numerical skills. These data reflect the impact of social traditions on skill development rather than as a part of the teaching process, which means that effort should be put into creating courses which will develop the skills of students.

Keywords: Education, skill classification, gender, grade, curriculum