Abstract:

The main purpose of universities is to educate in terms of acquisition of skills, abilities, competences and values, with the ultimate aim of promoting the employment and the success in the life. Many authors have found relationships between emotional competence and success at the workplace and in the life; highlighting aspects such as teamwork, stress management, or improving the relationships of people. In this way, this study shows that emotional competencies could be improved in university students through an Advanced Training Programme on Emotional Competence across an e-learning context. The construct of emotional intelligence (EI) refers to the individual differences in the perception, processing, regulation, and utilization of emotional information and these differences have been shown to have an impact on academic and life outcomes. In this way, the Advanced Training Course on Emotional Intelligence (ATCEI) is a learning method that challenges university students to take content emotional competence and apply their new understanding by working cooperatively in groups to seek solutions to real world problems. These problems are used to engage students' curiosity, to prepare students to think critically and analytically and initiate emotional learning using a virtual plaform. The total sample was composed of 193 students who were enrolled in a required Educational Psychology course. The course is a part of the Primary School Teaching degree programme curriculum. A total of 65.8% of the participants were female and 34.2% were male; 99 formed the control group and 94 the experimental group. Students’ average age was 19.53 years (dt=4.282). The results show a significant improvement in the ability of students in the experimental group to identify emotions, compared with the control group. In conclusion, emotional skills are part of the skills needed by people to successfully develop their professional work and personal life, and then they would be considered for training university students.

Keywords:

Emotional Competencies, Higher Education, training university students, e-learning context.