Abstract:

Nationwide lockdown was imposed in Spain due to the COVID-19 pandemic on 14th March 2020. From that day onwards, all in person non-essential activities, including academic activities, were restricted and shifted to virtual mode. During the lockdown, undergraduate students in Spain had to keep up with their coursework online. The Coronavirus crisis has impacted Spanish University, as well as Universities worldwide, challenging the traditional teaching system to increase digitalization and digitally enhanced learning, resources and teaching, university autonomy, and civic engagement.

This teaching project analyzes the online teaching and learning in 7 Degrees and 2 Masters courses of the University of Granada Campus. The 2020-21 academic year officially started on 21th September 2020 in a multimodal or hybrid teaching and learning system, combining on-campus activities with online classes. Due to the worsening of all clinical indicators in Andalusia, classes at University of Granada were developed exclusively on-line from 25th October 2020 up to date (to April 9th 2020, when the modality of the classes switched back to the initial hybrid system). In both cases, classes were developed using quality visual presentations using Google Meet combined with powerpoint presentations. In addition, Teaching Support Resources Platform-PRADO, a Learning Management System (LMS) based on Moodle, was used to watch videos, forums, revision activities among others strategies, such as the creation of questionnaires, as well as tests for the final evaluation of the students. We have evaluated how students have received this change to virtual classes by the use of videos, forums, questionnaires during classes, supporting online material, etc; all combined with google Meet and PRADO tools. An anonymous questionnaire with 24 questions, including dichotomous, multiple choice, and open-ended questions was used as the system for evaluating how students responded to the e-learning system imposed by the pandemic and the impact it had on them in terms of understanding and following the subjects. A total of 221 students took part in the present project. All students who completed the survey were taking subjects related to the field of biochemistry and biomedicine.

Around 34.12% of present students have indicated a lack in learning in virtual mode compared to face-to face classes; moreover 13.53% of them showed problems following this teaching system. By contrast, around 34% of the students valued virtual teaching experience in the present course with excellent or good punctuation. Surprisingly 37.65% of these students had a negative evaluation for virtual teaching, indicating the use of the blackboard and the human interactions as important aspects that could not be covered with virtual teaching.

To sum up, the present report indicated that although current strategies with PRADO platform, video or virtual resources are useful for this kind of teaching and virtual learning, 48.82% of the students who took this survey preferred face-to face teaching versus the virtual scenario. The main reasons for this preference are mainly social interactions with other students and with teachers which facilitates the resolution of doubts during classes.

Keywords:

Virtual teaching, face-to-face teaching, lockdown, COVID-19.