Achievement of Generic and Professional Competencies Through Virtual Environments.

This study is aimed to prove how Virtual Environments (VE) and Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) can be used as a tool to verify professional competencies. The incursion of virtual environments in education has shown that there is much potential in distance learning development. To find out how it influences the achievement of competencies, there was made an experimental study with a post-test design and control group. Students were divided into two groups; each of them was submitted to a different test. The results demonstrate that with the implementation of VE using ICT, the students who used the VE had a better performance than students who used the traditional evaluations. Confirmed with the 83% of the sample who achieved the highest levels (50% got strategical professional competencies, and 33% got autonomous professional competencies). Considering the study, the authors could notice that students do develop professional competencies along virtual environments, reflected not only in the level of competence achieved by the ones tested on the virtual environment but also in the average time they spend to do the test. Therefore, virtual environments have positives effects in the education field.