Emotional Intelligence of Digital Generation Students: Experience of Engineering University

Digitization of everyday life has a fundamental influence on communications, information perceiving and thinking styles of modern generation students. The study of issues of emotional well-being in the student body is particularly significant today, because of increasing desocialization of young people. The aim of the paper is to implement and evaluates the effectiveness of the educational module for the development of emotional intelligence of the 1st year students of engineering Universities. The authors developed the educational module “Emotional intelligence”. The assessment of an empirical research using diagnostic tools of N. Hall’s test of emotional intelligence and the scale of emotional intelligence by D.V. Lyusin conducted on a sample of students (N=174) of engineering majors of Tomsk Polytechnic University. The results showed that most part of them has low and medium (closer to the lower border) levels of EQ. Positive dynamics were observed after studying the educational module. The quantitative indicator reflecting the number of students with a low level decreased two times, and the proportion of students with a high level of EQ increased from 2.9% to 11.1%. The maximum growth was noted for “empathy”, “recognition and understanding of emotions of others” (Hall’s test) and “interpersonal emotional intelligence” (D.V. Lyusin’s scale) indicators. The practically significant result is that development of the level of EQ will contribute to better adaptation in the educational space of the engineering University. The findings will be used for further scientific research to improve the educational paths of digital generation students.