Practice, training, and teaching competence in the exercise of the virtual academic modality

Abstract

The necessary social isolation due to the Covid-19 pandemic, leaving virtual education as the only safe alternative to maintain academic activity in universities and not stop the training of future professionals. The main objective is to assess the competence for teaching in the virtual modality in professors of the Faculty of Health Sciences of the National University of Chimborazo and the Faculty of Education of the University of Granada. The methodology applied was quantitative, non-experimental, correlational, and cross-sectional. The population consisted of 114 teachers from these higher education contexts. The Online Tutor Functions and Competencies Scale was the instrument used for data collection. The most substantial results are that 58.77% of the teachers belonged to the female gender and the mean age was 42.87 years. There was a significant association between teaching category and time of experience in the university teaching profession (Rho=0.372; p=0.000). A total of 74.56% considered that the practical activities achieved the proposed objectives. 59.65% stated that they preferred the face-to-face teaching modality. Finally, the most relevant conclusion is that most of the professors involved in the research obtained a score that classified them as possessing the specific competences assessed, as well as the global competence for teaching in the virtual modality, which was significantly correlated with the teaching modality preferred by the members of the study population.