Evaluation of Online and Offline Communication Skills in Higher Education

Abstract

This study explores the offline and online communication skills of students in higher education. A total of 402 bachelor’s and master’s students from different study programs participated in the survey, such as education sciences, philology, communication sciences, and public relations. The evaluation was based on the scale of online and offline communication skills, which included four components: sociability, emotion decoding, self-disclosure, and assertiveness. The Mann–Whitney nonparametric statistical method was applied to examine the potential differences between the online and offline communication skills of students for the assessed variables of sociability, emotion detection, self-disclosure, and assertiveness. The statistical data analysis led to the following results: significantly higher online sociability; significantly higher online assertiveness; significantly higher offline emotion detection; significantly higher offline self-disclosure; bachelor’s students had significantly higher online skills than master’s students; and there were many differences between the various fields of specialization.