One of the challenges faced by the new Higher Education degrees is that of developing students' skills so they can access and interact with the world.

Following Rodríguez and Ibarra (2011:70), we understand competence “a latent attribute, knowledge, attitude, ability, and faculty to develop a profession, position or  perform an academic activity, by adequately and correctly executing the required behaviours and work or academic activities”. We agree with Villa and Poblete (2007:29), who stated that “skill-based learning means establishing the skills needed in today's world, and which, logically, cannot just be determined by universities without consultation and participation from work and professional stakeholders”. However,  undergraduate programmes in most universities in the European Union are focused on traditional teaching of scientific skills, rather than paying attention to transferable skills. (Rodríguez et al, 2010)

Contrary to this practice, we have focused this study on a basic aspect of current university teaching: the design of methods for the developing transferable skills in undergraduate programs, promoting student participation and using virtual learning environments.

From the MODES project[1], and framed as an experience prior DevalSimWeb Project[2], this study develops an innovative programme of interpersonal skills in the new plans from different European universities, enriching the students' profile through serious games. 

According to Zamora (2011), serious games are a satisfactory tool to develop skills. With their use; we want to find out about students' perspective on the use of serious games, in order to evaluate their efficiency and effectiveness.

As a basis we use the description provided by Álvarez et al (2010:5) to define serious games as “applications designed for users; starting with previous knowledge, they develop skills that form part of their educational programme, by creating situations where the student must resolve cases, tasks or problems”. This new discipline has the potential to allow experience-based learning, which stimulates a change in mindset, necessary for understanding systematic, complex and dynamic realities (Zamora, 2011). Another relevant aspect we must not lose sight of is the importance of truthful feedback during the game, thereby providing the player with information on his or her performance. This strategy allows the player to become aware of and think about the consequences of his or her actions.

These visual and dynamic surroundings are becoming more and more important when representing complex ideas and communicating thoughts in Higher Education, as in other professional environments (J.L. Plas,-et al., 2009), therefore it is of great interest to obtain some empirically valid design principles which assure their efficiency and effectiveness.

[1] MODES Project: MOdernising Higher Education througth Soft Skills accreditation. Lifelong Learning Programme. European Commission (Ref.: 2009-3667/001 001)

[2] DevalSimWeb Project: Development of professional skills through the use of participative assessment, simulation and web tools. European Commission’s ALFA III programme (Ref.:2011-10)

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