Case study · University pilot
University of Porto pilot: A 30-day soft skills story
By WiseWorldUniversity of Porto pilot · July 2025 · 1 month
In July 2025, we partnered with the University of Porto to ask a simple question: can an AI-powered platform get students to practice - and improve - their soft skills, every single day? Seven students. One month. Numbers that surprised us.
AI scenarios built on the fly
Conversations with AI characters
Soft-skill data points captured
AI nudges toward each student's goals
20× a single day's target
The story behind the data
The question we wanted to answer
Will university students - an autonomous, exam-pressured audience - actually show up, day after day, to practice their soft skills if it's short, AI-driven, and entirely self-directed?
Soft skills are the #1 predictor of career success - and the hardest thing for a university to teach at scale. We wanted to know if the right format could finally make voluntary practice stick across faculties.
What happened
Seven students showed up - and stayed. They built a daily habit, practiced across multiple faculties, and produced enough data for the university to act on.
63 AI episodes built on the fly
421 real-time conversations with AI characters
880 soft-skill assessments across 44 skills
1 h 38 min average per student - 20× a single day's target
The next sections show how each of those numbers came to be.
All numbers in this story are aggregated across active participants. Student names are anonymized - no individual identifiers or personal data are shared.
How we set it up
A small, mixed cohort. Students from multiple faculties, no prior exposure to the platform, and complete autonomy over what they worked on.
Pilot at a glance
- Start
- July 2nd, 2025
- Duration
- 1 month
- Cohort
- 13 invited · 7 active
How it ran
- Daily goal
- 5 minutes / day
- Mechanic
- AI-led simulations
- Pace
- Self-directed
What we measured
- Engagement
- Episodes & dialogues
- Skills
- 44 soft skills assessed
- Goals
- Self-declared learning goals
Engagement in numbers
Seven students. One month. The numbers that came out of this small group surprised us - and they tell a clear story about what happens when soft-skills practice fits into student life.
Each one a unique simulation built on the fly for the student.
Conversations students had with AI characters inside episodes.
Soft-skill data points assessed across student interactions.
AI-powered nudges, personalized to each student's goals.
Average - roughly 20× a single day's 5-minute target.
Distinct soft skills tracked across 6 categories.
What that means in plain terms: on average, every interaction produced more than two distinct soft-skill assessments. Practice wasn't cosmetic - every conversation generated learning data students and the university could see and act on.
Building a daily habit
Most learning tools see a steep drop-off after week one. Ours didn't. Across the 30-day window, cumulative engagement grew on more than 80% of pilot days - the kind of consistency that actually moves the needle on skills.
Cumulative engagement curve
Illustrative shape from anonymized aggregate engagement.
80%+ growth days
On 4 days out of every 5, the cohort added more practice than the day before - the inverse of the typical learning-app curve.
Voluntary continuity
No grades. No reminders. Students returned because the format fit into their day - and the progress was visible.
Making skills visible
Every interaction fed back into a personal skill profile spanning 44 skills across 6 categories. Across the pilot, students built measurable strength in cognitive abilities and communication - exactly the areas employers ask universities to develop.
Cognitive Abilities
Reasoning, learning, critical thinking
Communication
Listening, persuasion, expression
Teamwork
Collaboration, coordination, sharing
Problem Solving
Decision making, analytical thinking
Work Ethic
Dependability, resilience, focus
Leadership
Coaching, accountability, autonomy
- Replaces vague self-assessment with concrete, visual data
- Each student owns their own wheel - privacy stays with the individual
- Universities see aggregated patterns, never individual scores
- Gives career services and faculty a shared language for soft skills
- Teamwork
- Communication
- Cognitive Abilities
- Work Ethic
- Problem Solving
- Leadership
Where cognitive abilities led
When given complete freedom, students concentrated their practice in one area: cognitive abilities. The three skills they built most were the ones that turn raw academic ability into employable judgment.
skill scores
Deductive Reasoning
Working from principles to conclusions - the everyday muscle behind sound argument and good decisions.
skill scores
Active Learning
Turning new information into practice immediately - the meta-skill that makes every other skill faster to acquire.
skill scores
Critical Thinking
Questioning assumptions before they become decisions - the skill employers consistently rank #1 for graduates.
Career & Work
Self-declared learning goal · 4 mentions
Most students arrived asking how to communicate, lead, and decide - the skills that get them hired.
Personal Life & Relationships
Self-declared learning goal · 3 mentions
Soft skills aren't just for the workplace - students used them to navigate their lives outside the lecture hall.
Where engagement ran deepest
The top three students alone generated more than 2,200 skill scores - and the deepest engagement came from faculties you might not expect.
Student A
Faculty of Nutrition and Food Sciences
skill scores
Student B
Faculty of Psychology and Education Sciences
skill scores
Student C
Faculty of Psychology and Education Sciences
skill scores
Names anonymized for GDPR compliance - only faculty affiliation is retained, with student consent.
Voice of the students
We interviewed students at the end of the pilot. They consistently described three things: feeling their soft skills shift week by week, being able to name the categories they were working on, and noticing the change in how they handled real-world conversations.
Pilot testimonial reel
Recorded with consenting participants · July 2025
They could feel the shift
Week by week, students noticed soft skills changing - not vague growth, specific traits.
They could name the work
Students learned the language of soft skills and applied it to themselves.
It carried into real life
Conversations at home, in study groups, in interviews - all felt different.
A proposal for universities
Why partner with WiseWorld
One platform that gives students a soft-skills profile they can prove, and gives universities the data to guide them.
Soft skills usually live as opinions - on CVs, in references, in self-assessments. WiseWorld turns them into objective, evolving data that benefits both sides of the lecture hall.
For students
A soft-skills profile, with proof, that travels with them from campus to career.
Soft skills on a CV - with evidence
Objective, measurable data students can present alongside their grades - not just adjectives.
Confident self-understanding
Students learn the language of their own soft skills and can talk about them with clarity.
Targeted improvement
See gaps, practice them, and watch the wheel evolve - on the way to a career path that fits.
For universities
Real data on student soft skills - the signal you've never had to guide, support, and measure them.
Soft skills as data, not anecdote
Aggregate views of how skills sit - and shift - across cohorts, faculties, and programmes.
See the gap, see the change
Where students start, where they grow, and where the curriculum could meet them better.
Better guidance & decisions
Career services, faculty, and leadership all working from the same evidence base.
The bottom line: students walk away with a soft-skills profile they can stand behind. Universities walk away with the evidence to guide them. Same platform, both sides win.