Artificial Intelligence for Identifying Social Values and Soft Skills in Service-Learning Activities

This chapter details the methodology used to examine the field diaries written by students from the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid who participated in the “Service-Learning in Engineering” training activity. We used the specialized qualitative data analysis software Atlas.ti to analyze these texts, complemented with advanced language processing tools such as OpenAI and ChatGPT. This combination of tools facilitates an efficient classification and coding of the most recurrent ethical and moral values. We then relate these values to the soft skills according to the European catalog and the learning objectives of the learning guide. Preliminary analyses indicate that the most frequent terms in the coding are learning, motivation, teamwork, and empathy. The results of this study may be helpful for those interested in assessing transversal competencies, offering an approximate tool for their design and measurement.