Development of communication skills in modern students in an academic environment

Abstract

Interpersonal communication is an integral part of an educational environment and a contributor to students’ professional and personal development. Communicative competence is central to their psychological well-being, academic performance, and future careers. Student communication specifically involves an expansion of one’s social circle, a need for both autonomy and social recognition, and intensive interaction with the teaching staff and fellow students. Modern student communication reveals a number of trends, such as increasing virtual interactions, declining quality of face-to-face communication, issues with responsibility, and difficulties adapting to real-life social situations. They are linked to serious challenges, including a deficit of live communication, difficulties in establishing deep interpersonal connections, and elevated social anxiety. Despite an extensive body of research on communication psychology (B. G. Ananiev, G. M. Andreeva, V. A. Kan-Kalik), there is still a paucity of data on communication difficulties specific to an academic environment and their correlation with students’ personal characteristics and dynamics throughout university studies. This article presents the results of a comprehensive study on communicative challenges faced by students in an academic environment. At the pilot stage, questionnaires and content analysis were used to identify and classify key problematic situations in communication with peers and the teaching staff. The main research stage involved correlation and comparative analyses employing the Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale, V. N. Nedashkovsky’s Diagnostics of Communication Features, and -developed scales. The results revealed stable negative correlations between the level of social anxiety, avoidant behavior, and the development of communication competencies. The hypothesis about specific communication characteristics in younger and older students was confirmed. The study underlines the need of targeted development of students’ communicative competence which would take into account the identified difficulties and their psychological correlates. Such work would lay the basis for an algorithm tailored to assist students in adapting to a university environment.