Impact of COVID-19 on Students' Generic Skills - A Case Study in a University from a Developing Country

The education sector was considerably affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, risking the learning process and forcing governments to pull out contingency actions to ensure the students' development of generic and specific skills and guarantee education quality. These actions include the shift to online and hybrid (i.e., online and in-person) classes. This work assesses the pandemic effect on the generic skills of undergraduate students in a Colombian university. The study aims to determine the effect of COVID- 19 on the development of generic skills quantitatively. Two datasets were retrieved: i) A dataset with the scores obtained by the students in an institutional Generic Skills test and in the midterm tests; ii) A dataset with the students' scores in the Colombian standardized test for undergraduate students, called the Saber Pro test. Three analysis stages were performed: i) Univariate exploratory analysis; ii) Differential analysis to compare the No COVID vs. COVID scenarios; iii) A correlation analysis. Results showed that the scores of the Generic Skills and the Midterm tests increased significantly when comparing the two scenarios, except for the Written Communication. As for the Saber Pro test, only the scores for Written Comprehension, Quantitative Reasoning, and the global scores increased significantly. On the other hand, the correlation analysis showed a strong correlation only between the scores obtained at the Generic Skills and the Saber Pro tests for the English Proficiency skill. In addition, the analysis elucidated a weak correlation between the Generic Skills test's average and the Saber Pro's global score. Finally, the results prove that online education is a feasible alternative that offers students more flexibility to ensure the development of generic and specific skills.