Abstract:

The subject of competencies and the concern to relate higher education to the needs of the firms remains valid. This issue is far from becoming clearer, generating confusion and ambiguity in its application, even though a consensus about its usefulness exists. Competencies have been employed according to three approaches: functionalist, behaviorist and constructivist, but there’s still a controversy in the educative grounds about the prevailing one. Mexican Educative System asserts the prevailing one in the country is the constructivist, which has provoked a decrease of the behaviorist one, especially in the online modality, in which the student is responsible for his/her own learning. Aiming to analyze the prevailing approach in the online modality of the business area of Universidad Popular Autónoma del Estado de Puebla, a non-experimental, quantitative, descriptive and cross-sectional research was designed. Results show that the dimensions communication and critical thinking have a behaviorist trend while the dimensions independent learning and collaborative work tend to the constructivist one.