The 'SPOC' as a tool supporting the development of the ......The "SPOC" as a tool supporting the development of the entrepreneur’s "soft skills" Nadia CHAFIQ Abstract—The entrepreneur

International Journal of Scientific & Engineering Research, Volume 8, Issue ƘȮɯ ×ÙÐÓɪƖƔƕƛɯɯ ISSN 2229-5518

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The "SPOC" as a tool supporting the development of the entrepreneur’s "soft skills"

Nadia CHAFIQ

Abstract—The entrepreneur is supposed to manage the unexpected, to convince, to be a leader…. so many activities requiring « soft

skills ». Such skills are vital in the professional life and get along with other technical skills « Hard skills » which have however long been

advantaged. Yet, there are some methods enabling the reinforcement of the entrepreneurs’ « soft skills » both in-class and/or on-line:

This is the case of the SPOCs (Small Public online course).This paper aims at showing that digital learning environments (e.g. the SPOCs)

could boost the development of an entrepreneur’s « soft skills». The current article sheds light on two questions: What are the main "soft

skills" expected of an entrepreneur? and how to design SPOC/soft skills, taking into account the social and the interactive dimensions?

Index Terms—SPOC, MOOC, soft skills, Hard Skills, design, entrepreneur, ICT

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1 INTRODUCTION

oday, in a continuously changing environment, the entre-preneur is supposed to adapt to these changes and to rapidly penetrate into the business culture, so that

they can disseminate the values allowing then to contribute to their success. They should also communicate with people from different nationalities, with various backgrounds and diverse experiences.

In addition, the entrepreneur should have leadership qual-ities. In the jargon of the theory of competence, these skills are called Soft Skills. These are contrasted with the «Hard Skills» which are the technical skills of an individual, formally de-monstrable and proved by getting diplomas. In our entourage, there are people who, through their achievements, have an entrepreneurial profile. In effect, the entrepreneurial character-istics are the attitudes an entrepreneur possesses. Indeed, ex-perienced entrepreneurs have learned how to manage difficult moments and overcome obstacles. This is a huge challenge for the young entrepreneurs. So, How to accompany these young entrepreneurs to develop their Soft Skills?

The distinctive characteristic of our society has recently been the rapid rythm of technological change. It is time for the digital society .e.g. MOOC, SPOC ... and so many other acro-nyms. The progress of these technological tools has come out to meet the significant changes in today's society was marked by an evolution of knowledge [5].. Several researchers (Cisel, M.-Fun, Unow …) have tried to describe the design steps of these devices. However, when using the Mooc (Massive Open Online Courses) in small groups, this is referred to as SPOC (Small, Private, and Online Course). Khosrow Ghadiri of the

University of San José observed that the use of a Udacity course Had led to a very high failure rate While in a electronic course of EDX, conducted by means of SPOC, 90 percent of students have succeeded [7]. So, the Moocs , in the form of the SPOC, with personalized support, are radically transform-ing the vocational training. The use of online education will be generalized and significant savings will be obtained by reduc-ing the need for visiting interveners [11].The SPOC seems to be the path to take for the implementation of a device intend-ed for the development of entrepreneurs' Soft Skills. This pa-per is structured as follows: In Section I, The entrepreneur’s Soft Skills are examined in more details. Examples of SPOC design projects intended for entrepreneurs, carried out by Francophone and Anglophone universities, are presented in Section II. Finally, sections III and IV are devoted to the de-scription of the stages of the design of the SPOC-Soft Skills project developed within the framework of ORDIPU-LAPSTICE.

2 THE MAIN SKILLS OF THE ENTREPRENEUR

Quebecer Serge Harvey [1] defines the Soft Skills as compe-tencesWHICH ARE LIKEly to be orientated to serve human interactionsby meansof emotional intelligence. Serge Harvey subdivide the soft skills into four forms: person-al (efficiency, reliability ...); Communicative (Ability to start a discussion, to build a social network….); Interpersonal (Sense of responsibility, team spirit, awareness of the hierarchy…..), various (resourcefulness, passions, etc.). Although the term «Hard Skills» or « technical skills » is relatively a sim-ple concept, the soft skills are a little bit more difficult to identify, referring to a varied list of attitudes. Generally speaking, the Soft Skills are included in the follow-ing categories of competence (see Fig.1.): The skills of the entrepreneurs may be divided into two broad categories ( Hard Skills and Soft Skills) [7]. From the schema proposed above, the Soft Skills include : Managerial skills /

T

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• Nadia CHAFIQ a member of the multidisciplinary Laboratory in Sciences and Information, Communication, and Education Technology (LAPSTICE) Observatory of Research in Didactics and University Pedagogy (ORDIPU). Faculty of Sciences Ben M'Sik, University Hassan II of Casa-blanca, Morocco. E-mail: [email protected]

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Leadership skills / Contextual skills. Every entrepreneur should have the essential skills in order to fight and survivein a competitive world. The essential skills Used at work are not the technical skills, but basic skills that an entrepreneur needs to continue learn-ing and and complete workplace tasks and daily activities, such as information technology and communication. There are generally five essential skills which are indispensa-ble for an entrepreneur to be a peak performer: reasoning abil-ity, oral communication, written communication, computing and teamwork.

2.1 Managerial skills

They include the ability to manage staff, capitals as well as the ability to undertake organizational activities such as planning and marketing. 2.2 Leadership skills

The ability to motivate and help others to reach their full po-tential and to take risks and formulate a vision is a leadership skill. Moreover, the creation of a business is in itself a risk-taking. 2.3 Contextual skills

The ability to function successfully in different contexts, such as different countries or a culturally diverse workplace. The entrepreneur should demonstrate these contextual skills. e.g. when looking for new clients from other countries. The Technical skills are necessary, but they are not sufficient to overcome "the valley of death”.

3 VALORIZATION OF THE SOFT SKILLS VIA THE SPOCS

The period during which a young company is in the develop-ment phase of its offer and its clientele, while seeking financ-ing, is a step of great financial fragility. Expenses to be in-curred in terms of human resources or strategy generally do not compensate for the turnover, especially when the compa-ny is entering a new market. This phase of imbalance takes the evocative nickname of "valley of death" as it is a very difficult stage because of the multiplicity of obstacles to overcome [8]. This phase is similar to a long obstacle race which requires both endurance and agility (Soft-Skills). Facing the financing constraint, going through the production difficulties, to the development barrier, the entrepreneur may sometimes give up [12]. In fact, « Technical competence is no longer sufficient because it is relatively easy to acquire, whereas managerial

and relational competence is much more complex», says Pierre Dubuc Cofounder of Open class rooms [2]. Morocco needs entrepreneurs more than any time before, young people who, generally speaking, have too little interest in entrepreneurship must obviously be sensitized and encour-aged to start a business [3]. So, How to accompany young entrepreneurs to develop their Soft skills in a world which is even more flexible? A year has passed since the SPOCs, targeting the Soft Skills useful to the manager, have appeared on the American platforms (See Table I) Coursera and edX. Some American universities have seen it as an excellent way of making themselves known and enriching their reputation by spreading their knowledge to as many people as possible. They sometimes offer specializations in several courses focusing on soft skills such as "Managing People and Teams" at the University of Michigan, or " Conflict Management " at the University of California. Another reveal-ing sign of interest in soft skills is in France this time, "From the manager to the leader", a course which has 90,000 learners. "The demand for learning relational and professional skills is growing more and more," confirms Johannes Heinlein, vice president of edX [2].

TABLEAU I EXAMPLES OF SPOCS INTENDED FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF

SOFT SKILLS

Examples of SPOC projects - Softs Skills

The name of Mooc

or SPOC

Provider Description

Devel-

op Its Business Plan

OPEN-

CLASS-

ROOMS

This course will

allow entrepreneurs

to have the tools to

develop a business

plan consistent with

the entrepreneurial

project.

TO BOOST HIS

PROFESSIONAL

EFFECTIVENESS

VIA SOFT SKILLS

UNOW/

CAPTAIN

SPOC

Identify, develop

and mobilize their

natural skills

around their profes-

sional challenges.

MANAGERIAL

INNOVATION

LEARN

ASSEM-

BLY

Acquire the keys

to understand the

approaches of man-

agerial innovation.

LEADING

THE ENTERPRISE

OF THE FUTURE

LONDON

BUSI-

NESS

SCHOOL

This course fo-

cuses on the new

managerial chal-

lenges in today's

enterprise: flexibil-

ity, mobility, real-

time information

sharing.

Fig.1.List of an entrepreneur’s soft skills

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Experienced entrepreneurs have learned to handle difficult times and overcome barriers. That is a tremendous challenge for young entrepreneurs. Therefore, the SPOC can help them to develop their manageria and relationallskills, the question then is how to design the SPOC/SOFT SKILLS, taking into account the social dimension and the interactive dimension?

4 THE DESIGN OF THE SPOC-SOFT SKILLS

This part is an attempt to define all the steps concerned with the design and the development of the « SPOC-Soft Skills » within the framework of an engineering which is based on the ADDIE model (Analysis / Design Development / Implemen-tation / Evaluation) (1980, Florida State University) [10] in order to contribute to the entrepreneurs soft skills develop-ment.

According to this pedagogical protocol (Fig.2.), nine basic steps are tobe implemented in the design of the SPOC Soft Skills: 1-Before the start of the SPOC project design, pedagogical objectives together with thetarget audience have to be defined and formalisedin a guideline notein order to be validated by the project stakeholders. 2-To constitute a multidisciplinary team to facilitate the reali-sation of the SPOC project. 3-Learning scenarios: to elaboratecustomized learning sce-narios. 4-The choice of the ICT tools (applied to teaching) : In the case of SPOC-Soft Skills project, the Moodle platformhas been adoptedthen online tools and resources have been selected for the learning types (Inquiry, Discussion, Practice, Collabora-tion, Production). Indeed, in this SPOC-Soft Skills project, the teacher can ask the students many learning activities which can be summa-rised as follows(From Laurillard, 2012) [9]: Acquisition: reading, watching, listening Inquiry: using resources to develop an evidence-based output Discussion: debating, questioning, answering, negotiating ideas Practice: acting, in the light of feedback, to achieve a goal or output

Collaboration: working with others to achieve a joint output Production: making something for others to evaluate against agreed criteria The ICT tools obviouslyimprove and support all these learn-ing activities (see Table II).

In order to define the six weeks of the SPOC "Soft Skills" pro-ject, the prerequisites of our target audience in communica-tion, management and leadership are firstly evaluated through an online questionnaire. Then the questionnaires are processed in order to define the objectives of the six-week

Fig.2. The design of the SPOC’s pedagogical protocol

TABLEAU II THE CONTENT OF THE SPOC SOFT SKILLS (6 WEEKS)

weeks of the SPOC-

Soft Skills

Exam-

ples of the

the ICT

tools

The learningout-

comes

Week. 1 :

tocommunicate

(oral communication)

Confer-

ence / vid-

eo/

text chat or

the Voice

Chat

Learningin real or

simulated situation

Week. 2:

to communicate

(written communica-

tion)

/ wiki Forum,

to view videos / use

of online resources

Week. 3 : to plan

(Create SMART ob-

jectives, 'planning

and control')

ICT plan-

ning tools use planning tools

Week. 4 :

to plan

(networking and

the research

of information)

social me-

dia platfor

ms contact

lists enter-

prisesuse

of data-

bases

To offer unique net-

working opportuni-

ties. / the creation of a

peer learning com-

munity.

Week. 5 :

to manage

work in a multiculturalteam

social me-

dia platfor

ms contact

listsenter-

prises

to learn to work

with each other's diffe

rences in approach,

experience, and back-

ground.

/ to provide opportu-

nities for collabora-

tion/ To build positive

social relations

with others

Week. 6 :

to evaluate

Assess-

ment tools

may offer

a series of

questions :

online

quiz.

To build something

new / encouraging

and supporting inno-

vation/ pro-

duce a piece of work

that answers

the teacher's question

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SPOC. Then pedagogical sequences are developed relating to these skills, based on the practice and the creation of the vide-os. In order to succeed in the learning scenario of the six weeks, the written contents have been reduced and the SPOC Soft Skills platform has been fed (see Fig. 3) with short videos accompanied by questions and learning activities (Inquiry, discussion, practice, collaboration and production activities).

5-Beta-testing and evaluation of SPOC-Soft Skills Realization of a beta test to check the overall coherence, the quality of the teaching scenarios, the quality of the accompa-nying resources and the clarity of instructions. For the case of our project, the beta test stage began on De-cember 15, 2016 on the Moodle platform (see Fig. 4), for a du-ration of 6 weeks for a target audience of 20 entrepreneurs. The group has a limited size and the same people are found throughout the training course. The course consists of a series of short videos, slides, quizzes and creative projects.

6-Launching of the Soft Skills-SPOC and Communication

Communicating regularly with the participants via Forum tools (the trainer is known, highlighted in the videos, and also present throughout the SPOC) and can be solicited for indi-vidual coaching. 7- Realization of webinars: Programming of regular vide-oconferences (live events related to the training course). These webinars take the form of virtual classrooms where everyone can intervene to ask a question, give their opinion or share their experience.

8-Analysis and assessment: Identify useful indicators and follow the participants on a regular basis via Learning Analyt-ics (number of participants viewing videos, number of active participants on social networks ...). Thereafter data can be in-terpreted and analyzed (Analytics) and can give the teacher a clearer representation on the points to be improved. 9-Badges: As part of the SPOC Soft Skills project, we have in-tegrated a plugin for the badges at the level of the Moodle platform. At the end of the training course, entrepreneurs will receive a Success Badge to motivate them. In fact, the SPOC allows the acquisition and / or development of competencies; it contains evaluation systems to give access to a certificate that attests the achievement of these competencies.

4 CONCLUSION ET PERSPECTIVE

Taking into account the characteristics of the SPOC, the use of this system appears as a practical solution to guarantee the vocational training of entrepreneurs. The Spoc- Soft Skills pro-ject is likely to work, With motivated entrepreneurs, in small groups, and allocating adequate resources in terms of teachers and tutors. Via this device, the entrepreneur can overcome "The valley of death”. In other words, the future of MOOC is partly connected with the SPOC. As a practical extension, the results of the "beta test" stage of the SPOC-Soft Skills project will be presented within the framework of a future research. These results that could lead to reflect on ways for the improvement of the SPOC that meet the expectations and the needs expressed by both entre-preneurs and teachers.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

I would like to thank to my advisor Mr. Talbi, PhD, for their invaluable guidance and many useful suggestions during my work on this paper. I would also like to express my gratitude to all those who gave me the possibility to complete this pa-per.

REFERENCES

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[2] Revue, le news de l’économie Challenge 30 MOOCS et 25 Formations pour booster sa carrière, 30 mars 2016 (https://www.relay.com/challenges/30-moocs-et-25-formations-pour-booster-sa-carriere-numero-470-business-management-229388-15.html)

[3] Mohamed Boussetta, Entrepreneuriat des Jeunes et Développement de l’Esprit d’Entreprise au Maroc : l’Expérience de Moukawalati, 2013.

[4] Geneviève Demers et Diane-Gabrielle Tremblay, les mooc, spoc et autres nouvelles modalités de formation : Enjeux et défis No 2016- , http://benhur.teluq.ca/SPIP/aruc/IMG/pdf/note_rech_aruc_mooc_version_3_avril_2016_dgt.pdf

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[6] Article, Référentiels de compétences entrepreneuriales, 2014 http://www.socialbusinessmodels.ch/sites/default/files/u1/tools_

Fig.3.The Screen Capture of SPOC Soft Skills

Fig.4.Description of the SOFT SKILLS project

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fr/entrepreneurship_skills/Referentiel%20de%20competences%20entrepreneuriales.pdf

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[8] David Boucard Planel, Entrepreneurs : de la difficulté de franchir la "vallée de la mort", 2012, https://www.france-science.org/Entrepreneurs-de-la-difficulte-de.html

[9] Diana Laurillard, et al, A constructionist learning environment for teachers to model learning designs, 2012, http://change.mooc.ca/files/dl/Laurillard%2520et%2520al%25202012.docx

[10] Mikael Degeer, ADDIE : UN MODÈLE MOOC COMPATIBLE?, 2014 http://mooc.hypotheses.org/

[11] Jean Charles Pomerol et al, Les Mooc conception, usages et modéles économiques,2014, édition DUNOD

[12] Équipe dynamique entrepreneuriale, Comment lutter contre le dé-couragement de l'entrepreneur ?,2016, http://www.dynamique-mag.com/article/comment-lutter-decouragement-entrepreneur.8300

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