Strengthening Student Engagement: How Student Hone Their Soft Skill Along Online Learning During Covid-19 Pandemic?

The objective of this research is to know how student hone their soft skill along online learning during Covid-19 pandemic. It is a descriptive research, applied through interview and questionnaire survey among 15 students taken Leadership Class, Academic Year of 2020-2021. This study has discovered by providing group discussion session, lecturer has generated enthusiasm for learning and student’s interaction during online learning. To enhance students’ soft skill along online learning, it is found by optimizing the usage of media and method of learning; up to date SLP, integrated the LMS with Whatsapp function through Collaborative Learning. Students are schooled by submitting mind mapping sub-subject task, class discussion, FGD team discussion, PPT submission and oral presentation in specific time limit every meeting. It is provided from up to date case studies in every meeting that help students in providing the practitioner's view, hone critical thinking, presentation and public speaking skills. Keyword: Student Engagement; Online Learning; Collaborative Learning; Soft Skill


Questions of the study
Although delivering learning content online is associated with numerous advantages, online classes often face skepticism. The issue of how to effectively engage students in online courses raises more questions than answers. Moreover, due to special circumstances happened nowadays, Covid-19 pandemic need special treatment to keep student vibrant and optimistic about their study. Online classes need efficient strategies to provide effective learning experiences to the learners (Chen et al., 2010). The following research questions guided the study: (1) How lecturers generate enthusiasm for learning and student's interaction during online learning?
(2) How student hone their soft skill along online learning?
To answer the two research questions, a thorough and systematic search of relevant literature was conducted.

Literature Review
The situation with the COVID-19 outbreak outdared universities all over the world and compelled them to shift from traditional learning mode to online teaching and learning overnight (Dhawan, 2020). Universities faced challenges such as accessibility, affordability, flexibility, learning pedagogy, readiness and management of quality. Martin (2020) stressed on the importance of quality management program and continuous development for the success of online learning and preparing everyone to be ready for any interrupted situation. Dhawan (2020) stated that The World Economic Forum reported there was a need for people to be ready for challenging circumstances, as the COVID 19 pandemic enforced many of them to change the way they perceive education. Ayebi-Arthur (2017) illustrated that by the example of New Zealand when seismic activities happened and the educators tried to overcome the barriers, they suggested robust Information Technology infrastructure as a prerequisite for online learning.
In fact, in the time of COVID 19, educators had not been concerned much about the quality of education rather they were busy with the adoption of online learning (Martin, 2020;Mhlanga and Moloi, 2020). The name of educational institutions was under inquiry. They had to maintain the quality of education and performance in the interrupted circumstances. Dhawan (2020) stated that each of these educational institutions was trying to find a suitable alternate to manage these challenging situations. Technical difficulties, students' and teachers' barriers, and preparedness were of many reasons for making the shift was challenging (Al Meajel and  Parkes et al., 2014). Therefore, educational institutions should innovate solutions to deal with the challenging context during the COVID 19 period (Liguori and Winkler, 2020). Taken an example, China was the first country to deal with this overnight shift from offline to online classrooms that was, educators had changed their instructional methodology to deal with new circumstances and adapted to the situation of uncertainty (Yen, 2020). To face difficult circumstances, the educational institutions prepared a complete guide for students and instructors to ease the matter and helped everyone to access to online LMSs platform (Yen, 2020). Why we need the online platform like LMS? Because we need to make sure, students still could hone their soft skill. According to Al-Mamun (2012) soft skills is crucial for the enhancement of employment performance and career prospects.

Collaborative Learning
Collaborative Learning (CL) has been proven to promote soft skills (Lee and Lim, 2012). Previous literature (Hennessey and Dionigi, 2013) and this study preliminary findings show that CL has been widely implemented in teaching and learning. Then again, question arises as to why students' mastery of soft skills is reported to be low. This indicates that although CL is implemented widely in the teaching and learning process, it does not often naturally happen in a group. Andresen (2009) stated that the evaluation of students' contributions in group work encourage them to participate actively in group activities. This is also helpful in overcoming the free rider issue which is often mentioned by previous researchers (Mohamad et al., 2013). Here arises the importance of online platform for the facilitation of CL environments. Research by Sancho et al. (2011) showed that CL promotes the development of soft skills. However, if collaboration does not happen in a group, the development of soft skills will not happen. Therefore, educators must properly design their online platforms to make sure that it can facilitate Online Collaborative Learning (OCL). Some studies indicated that online learning is proven to be more effective than traditional learning (Nurbiha, 2012). Hangman and Almekinders et.al. (2003), while suggesting the interweaving of soft skills in existing courses, describe two processes which were designed to integrate soft skills development in different academic settings. Encouraging lessons and insights for learning participation have also been presented by them.

Learning management System (LMS)
Many countries have introduced such curfew and lockout protocols from the outset to cope with the Covid-19 pandemic (Alawamleh, 2020  In first meeting whether offline and online learning, Semester Learning Plan (SLP) will be presented to students about department learning outcomes, subject learning outcomes, subsubject each meeting, media of learning, learning method, assessment, references, the lecturers.
So, students have clear guideline about the whole semester for the subject. Every meeting, lecturer find the attractive method to generate the enthusiasm of student for involving them

Jurnal Manajemen Bisnis
ISSN : 1829-8486 (print) | ISSN : 2528-1216 (online) Volume 18, No. 1, Januari 2021 http://journal.undiknas.ac.id/index.php/magister-manajemen/ 6 into learning process. Before class, students should prepare and upload the mind mapping for the current subject into ilearn. For avoiding plagiarism and having some effort for reading and writing, the mind mapping should be in hand-writing format. It is aimed to make student in tune or having the big picture of the current subject that will be discussed. After taking 30 minutes discussion in WA Class Group, lecturer provide Case Study to be discussed in team in separate WA group (FGD team). This is effectively generate students' level of activity in discussion. Also it eases the individual assessment whether the student involve in FGD team discussion or not. More less one hour in FGD team discussion, alternately the students in one group prepare the PPT and also the oral presentation by utilizing Voice Note (VN) in Whatsapp app or they could use voice recorder also if its bigger data.

METHOD
This study is a descriptive research design is applied through interview and questionnaire survey which were conducted online due to the pandemic of the Covid-19. It is resulted because everyone has to stay at home; instead of distributing physical copies to the students inside the campus.

Data Collection
Population and sample for this survey is only limited for student who take the author's class which is the M1 -Leadership Class -Odd Semester -Academic Year of 2020-2021, consist of 15 students. As mentioned before, the instrument of data collection are interview and online questionnaire. Creation of appropriate survey items stems from previous literature.
Some of our survey items can be selected from the existing scales from prior studies. Further, some items may be developed from discussions on the relevant topics from different pieces of literature (Lewis et al., 2005).

Presentation of survey result
The interview started with basic questions about Semester Learning Plan (SLP). "Have the Semester Learning Plan (SLP) for Leadership Subject been given at the 1st online learning meeting, by uploading it to LMS -i-learn?" Out of 15 students, 93.3% of the students answer Yes.
Related to the first question, followed by this question. "What are the advantages of SLP?" 80% of students recognize SLP get to know the subject learning outcomes, 73.3% of students also recognize SLP get to know the lecture material, 66.7% of students get to know the references, and 73.3% of students get to know the composition in assessment. It means all of four aspects above are recognized as SLP's advantages for students.
Furthermore, "Has the SLP -Leadership Subject currently accommodated the needs of online learning?" 100% students agree that SLP has accommodated the needs of online learning.
Next questions, "What are the obstacles in online learning?". All the students answer the main obstacles in online learning is network problem. Meanwhile the other obstacles are non-userfriendly platform and limitation in data package at the same percentage level which are 93.3% each. 60% students answer difficulty having class on schedule.
Additionally, the question is going about learning process. "Do lecturers try to generate enthusiasm for learning and student interaction in online learning?" Out of 15 students, 100% were Yes. It means all of the students agree that lecturer need to try generating enthusiasm for learning and student interaction in online learning.
Followed by next question, "What has been done by lecturers to generate enthusiasm for learning and student interaction in online learning?" Here is the answer of every students about how to generate enthusiasm in online learning. Table 1 Answering for "What has been done by lecturers to generate enthusiasm for learning and student interaction in online learning?" A lot of the students share similar argumentations; some students agree that lecturer should provide group discussion session.