Abstract:

In Mexico, the covid-19 pandemic has hit hard on many students [1]. Some of them have had their whole families infected and unfortunately a few of them lost close relatives. Some of the students infected with the virus asked for extensions in deadlines for homework and term papers. It has been noticed by one of the authors that in large groups with good virtual assistance to classes most of the students affected by the pandemic have complied with their course work. It was also noticed that students participated more when the professor used a blackboard in front of the camera to carry out some calculations to his engineering students. They also maintained their attention if the teacher did not lose time switching on and off at sharing the screen but instead, got help from a student to show the notes prepared beforehand by the professor. The conclusion has been that the basic and handy technology of in-person classes (blackboard and pieces of chalks) is more transparent and easy to use contrary to online teaching in which technological problems (bad internet connections, electricity outages, malfunctioning microphones, low resolution cameras, etcetera) obstruct the flow of communication between the teacher and the students. Students also might like that the professors keep some dressing formally during classes and support some of the students affected by the pandemic. Students during the pandemic have been very interested in discussing topics to understand the causes and consequences of the pandemic. In a class by one of the authors, the professor explained with an Ishikawa Diagram why virtual distance learning was less effective for learning during the pandemic than with in-person teaching, a check list was built to teach the students how to diminish risk of contagion in going out for shopping, a Pareto Diagram was constructed to demonstrate students that older people should be vaccinated first, and correlations between the number of contagious people and the number of deceased people in 192 countries were discussed at length. Understanding and trying to solve some of the problems caused by the pandemic is important because even the Mexican government was sending unclear messages regarding the seriousness of the pandemic and it did not recommend effective methods of protection to avoid contagion of the population, like the use of masks (not even the Mexican President used it in most public appearances). So that, it is important that students learn and apply engineering tools to analyze and try to resolve problems like the ones triggered by the pandemic. In this paper some experiences of teaching the course of Quality Control during the pandemic by one of the authors are shared as well as the use of decision tree diagrams, the quality function deployment, failure modes and effects analysis and other tools to analyze and solve problems arouse by the pandemic is reported.

References:
[1] D.N. Dominguez-Perez, N. Dominguez-Vergara, From the lessons of coronavirus, a whole new world in education?, EDULEARN 2020 Proceedings, pp. 6412-6421, 2020.

Keywords:

Teaching learning process, higher education, covid-19.