Blended Learning and the Development of Transversal Competences

Alexander Gallardo

ABSTRACT

Factors that go from the simple need of learning, competitiveness and the incidents of globalization are distinguished in the development of the transversal competences facing the permanent learning throughout life. This generality allows us to introduce ourselves in the needs of our own growth as human beings, and land in the specificity of the probable tools to educational adapted methodologies to virtual education. But only with e-learning tools, it would be very complicated to develop competences. Few people would be able to learn to negotiate by reading a monitor, or to direct a high performance team just by participating in a forum. It is more frequently observed in those who have the responsibility of educating, how they go from pure e-learning models to mixed learning models in which they combine the presence and active participation of the person with the on-line resource; these last ones are called Blended Learning or B-learning models. This research was raised to evaluate and determine the impact of the B-learning in the development and adhesion of transversal competences in students of the Specialization of Business Management. The type of investigation employed was descriptive and with a design of a field research. Three types of questionnaires and a simple direct observation were used, which provided the input to construct the indicators which allowed the measurement of the effectiveness of the educational model applied in this graduate course. The recommendations are outlined at the end for a convenient transformation of the curricular design used in the approach of the Profile by Competences.

Key words: E-learning, B-learning, Learning, Transversal Competences, Profile by Competences, Indicators.