Social skills and virtual education of university students

Abstract

Introduction. At present, education has been forced to take a 360-degree turn, because thanks to the pandemic caused by the COVID-19 virus, since March 16, 2020, face-to-face education was forced to transform into virtual education. With this, the social relationships that were consolidated through education were also affected, so that the students had to create new skills to socialize. Target. Identify the influence of virtual education on the social skills of university students at the Technical University of Ambato. Methodology. Through descriptive research with a mixed approach carried out on 105 students from the Technical University of Ambato, who responded to a test on social skills and a survey on virtual education. Results. A Spearman correlation of 0.757 was obtained between the variable of social skills and virtual education. Conclusion. The students to whom the two surveys were applied show that virtual education has significantly affected their social skills, which is a point to be addressed by higher education institutions together with teachers and students, creating methods or strategies that encourage social skills in virtual education.