Abstract:

We all know and directly feel the impact COVID-19 has had on our personal and professional daily lives. The challenge of adapting to new circumstances is to minimize the constraints of this pandemic in our lives. This challenge was extended to teaching and learning (T&L) methodologies, approaches, tools, environments, and interactions with a major impact on the normal functioning of higher education institutions. In accordance with the temporal restrictions implemented by the Portuguese authorities, the main objective of this work is to share the experience of the School of Economics and Management of the University of Porto’s (FEP) in adapting to the pandemic situation during the 2019/2020 and 2020/2021 academic years by pointing out the institutional approaches implemented. We emphasize the support given to the academic community by FEP's Information Technology Services (SIFEP) and by the University of Porto’s (U.Porto) Educational Technology Unit (ET). Wel present different procedures and methodologies adopted, digital tools used, Information Technologies (IT) investments, students’ feedback undertaken during the remote emergency teaching (RET). It is also important to analyse the impact of this experience in current and future academic practices, considering that courses at U.Porto are accredited as face-to-face by the National Agency for Assessment and Accreditation of Higher Education (A3ES).

Keywords:

Institutional response, remote learning, hybrid learning, digital tools, IT investment, teacher’s training, student feedback.