Abstract:

Because of COVID -19, in the last year, almost every educational institution developed some solutions to reduce school absenteeism, improve remote learning methodologies, develop learning opportunities for children and youths with different characteristics and needs, increase psychological attendance for students and families and many other strategies because educational leaders, have identified that the pandemic has made a negative impact in the educational and integral development goals achievements. The United Nations, on its fourth sustainable goal establishes the importance to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all; but the reality because of COVID-19 is that the pandemic has wiped out twenty years of education gains, 101 million of children fell below minimum reading proficiency levels in 2020, participation in organized pre-primary learning increased 8%; and specifically in higher education, it has been identified that school completion rate has decreased.
Universidad Panamericana has designed since January 2021, the HybridUP model; an educational model that is based in blended learning, in-person and remote students and active methodologies to achieve quality in learning processes considering every career graduation profile and also, formative strategies to help youths to develop on an integral way.
To make the HybridUP model a pedagogical reality and a meaningful learning experience for students, the University designed teacher training programs, a pilot test with professors from different academic departments, new technology elements inside classrooms and structure and organization processes of the academic and administrative areas. By these, it has been concluded that the HybridUP model is much better than the remote learning because of the benefits in the learning processes of the students. Nevertheless, in order to identify the students’ point of view, experiences and achievements; and contrasting this information with the main principles, characteristics and objectives of the HybridUP Model, a qualitative research has been developed. It considered the following categories: (1) Advantages and disadvantages of face to face learning, (2) Advantages and disadvantages of remote learning (3) Development of academic competencies on the face to face modality (4) Development of socio-emotional competencies on the face to face modality. For this, the Pedagogy and Psychology School team carried out a survey and semi-structured personalized interviews to their students to identify advantages, disadvantages and relation between variables of learning modality and type of competencies developed.
By analyzing all this qualitative information by ATLAS.ti and the comparison between this information and the literature review about the pedagogical elements related to the hybrid modality and the development of academic and socio-emotional competencies, the main objective of the research has been achieved. Universidad Panamericana is giving the correct learning environments to develop academic and socio-emotional competencies, but it’s important to systematize integral programs that can help the continuity of the students' process nevertheless the modality and also programs that may help in one hand the adaptation of students in both modalities and in the other hand, the socio-emotional development in remote students.

Keywords:

hybrid modality, university educational model, teacher training, educational innovation, COVID-19.