University teaching practices for the acquisition and development of students' transversal skills in e-learning mode

Abstract

In the digital era, university education is constantly evolving due to the digitalization and innovation of teaching practices and modes in the service of the noble cause of building specific and transversal competencies of students. However, the learning process does not often target transversal competencies, conferring their diffuse and transferable specificity. In doing so, active pedagogy makes the learner an actor in his learning and calls for a mode of learning assisted by new technologies: university e-learning, which exploits the great potential offered by information and communication technologies (ICT) and contributes to many assets through collaborative activities. Our objective is to conduct a study on the development of transversal skills in university e-learning through a quantitative study. We hypothesize that distance learning positively impacts the development of transversal skills necessary for easier integration into the labor market. For this purpose, a questionnaire was distributed to students at the Faculty of Education in Rabat to verify the influence of teaching practices in distance education on the development of transversal competencies. The descriptive and correlational analysis results revealed that distance learning optimizes the development of transversal competencies, and a significant positive causal relationship exists between distance learning and the development of transversal competencies. Therefore, our work can be used by teachers to improve university teaching practices, thus promoting pedagogical innovation in the higher education system and consequently the educational system's performance.

Keywords: University e-learning, Distance learning, Educational Technologies, Pedagogical innovation, Transversal competencies.

JEL Classification: I23

Paper type: Empirical research