Individual virtual competences developed by a distance education business administration course: the case of Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina

Abstract

This paper presents the perceptions of undergraduate students in regards to the individual virtual competence – CVI development. This study occurred in a business administration distance education course at Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina. Hence, the research was carried out according to the phenomenological approach and can be characterized as qualitative and quantitative, furthermore as applied and descriptive. It is a cross-sectional study, comprised by a case study. The data treatment was done by means of analyze CVI´s development. In order to do so it was used the following research categories: virtual self-efficacy - VSE; virtual social ability - VSA; and, virtual media ability - VMA, that are developments that make up the construct Individual Virtual Competence - IVC as proposed by Wang and Haggerty (2011). Furthermore it was analyzed the virtual competences that are the most wanted by managers. The result shows that the course has done contributions to the IVC´s development. However, the stimulus for students to work together in virtual form has been higher from colleagues than by an institutional guideline.