ABSTRACT
During the last years, the way of teaching classes was impacted by modifying almost 100% of the university courses to digital mode, this modified the academic space for the learning and development of competencies of the students, including collaborative learning. Collaborative work helps students to exchange knowledge, solving doubts between them and complementing their skills when they are solving problems or challenges. This paper presents an analysis of the development of competencies through collaborative learning using virtual communication channels. For this purpose, the following transversal competencies were evaluated: critical thinking, scientific thinking, leadership and reasoning for complexity. The question that seeks to answer this work is from the perception of the students, if their development of competencies and their performance in collaborative learning, has been affected due to the pandemic and the permanent online connection. The statistical test used was the paired t-test, since the same population was evaluated at different times, a survey was carried out on students at the beginning of the semester and at the end of the semester. The results showed that the lockdown situation modified the compromise of most of the students to work on teams as well as their ability to stay focused. Therefore, only the competencies that involve self-work (scientific work, reasoning of complexity) or multidisciplinary work, were increased during the lockdown. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.