Social Intelligence Skills in Hybrid Learning Ecosystems: A Systematic Literature Review of University Students

Abstract

Research on hybrid higher education frequently discusses social presence, belonging, socio-emotional competence, and collaboration, yet these constructs are often treated as interchangeable with social intelligence. This review therefore examines how social intelligence should be reconceptualised for hybrid learning ecosystems and identifies contextual conditions that enable or constrain its development. Following PRISMA 2020, 500 records published between 2022 and 2026 were identified from Google Scholar, ScienceDirect, MDPI, and ERIC; after deduplication, screening, and eligibility assessment, 28 peer-reviewed sources were retained. To reduce conceptual and evidential conflation, the revised synthesis differentiates primary empirical evidence from prior reviews and framework papers and uses thematic synthesis to map construct boundaries, multimodal social competencies, enabling and barrier conditions, and pedagogical implications. The literature consistently suggests that hybrid environments require an expanded social-competence repertoire: reading reduced or multimodal social cues, expressing empathy across mediated interaction, sustaining social presence and belonging, coordinating synchronous and asynchronous communication, and collaborating across unequal modes of participation. However, the available evidence does not by itself demonstrate temporal or causal transformation of social intelligence. Rather, it supports a reconceptualisation in which social intelligence functions as a higher-order relational capacity, whereas social presence and belonging operate as contextual-relational conditions and socio-emotional competence provides partially overlapping emotional-regulatory resources. Hybrid pedagogy should therefore design explicitly for equitable participation, relational support, cross-modal collaboration, and reflective socio-emotional practice, while future research should validate hybrid-context measures and test developmental change longitudinally.