The study focused on the practical aspect of Emotional Intelligence (EI) – how and by what means people develop EI in the process of learning in online courses.
Data on EI development, techniques and tools were collected on the basis of an online course created by the author of research for a Russian-speaking audience, since most of the practical research in the field of EI demonstrated the level of EI in different social groups, rather than the development process and specific tools.
The format of the course is microlearning with a duration of 1.5 months, which also imposed a certain framework in the collection of data and its confirmation. In the course of interaction with the study participants, their requests for the development of EI at the beginning of the training were identified and how these requests changed in the educational process, what difficulties students faced in working on themselves, how they assessed the educational process in the online environment, what changes they were offered for comfortable online learning. Much attention was paid to the results of the implementation of tools and exercises from the course assignments.
The research findings identified how students’ EI levels changed, which tools helped them achieve positive results, and which tools need to be modified. One of the important points was the definition of cultural specifics of the tools that affect the awareness and expression of emotions, the search for solutions in working with the problems and peculiarities of communication – within and outside the group.
Field study data was collected from questionnaires, “the Emotional Intelligence Self-Evaluation Test” (a survey) by Nicholas Hall and in-depth interviews.
The results were compared with each other and compared with theoretical and practical works of other researchers, in general, with the relevance of the development of EI, with the measurement of the level of EI in different groups of people (national, ethnic, professional), and correlated by the duration of data collection with short and longitudinal studies.
There are some directions in this research: development of EI in a microlearning online environment, a specific cultural audience – Russian students and a connection between personal growth and intercultural communication skills.
A combination or these research parts allows to fill the currently existing gaps in the study of a process of development EI in online education and features of Russian audience.
In the course and as a result of the study, it was determined that the demand for the development of EI is growing and EI as an area of personal psychological and behavioral progress is of interest to more and more people from different social groups. At the same time, the topic of obtaining online education in the framework of self-development is being actualized, but with a focus on personal growth (existential requests, determining one’s place in the world) and communication (including professional communication, which emphasizes the important role of EI in the business environment).
In future studies in this area, are commended to expand the target audience, compare different cultural groups, tools for the development of EI in overlapping educational environments – in online and mixed learning.
