Abstract:

The isolated condition caused by the Covid-19 pandemic impacted the performance of day-to-day activities. In the teaching context, the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) has supported distance learning and remote activities. However, there are still few reports on the experience of using this type of software in the execution of professional courses. Thus, Federal Institute of Amazonas, located in Brazil, has developed several professional courses in the field of computing open to the students of the institution and to the external public free of charge. It is necessary that the difficulties of carrying out this type of courses are discussed, in addition to the positive and negative aspects of the use of ICTs during their planning, execution and evaluation. In this paper, the results of adapting an 80-hour course in the area of Software Engineering to the virtual format are presented. The course has been updated, including ICT-mediated research activities. At the end of the course, 24 of the 32 participating students completed a form evaluating the various activities carried out and their adaptation to the remote format. The results indicated a positive evaluation of the activities, highlighting the relevance of the dialogue between the students and the teachers so that the course would not become tiring, avoiding the students’ dropout. Also, the inclusion of remote research and guidance activities mediated by ICTs, allowed the application of the contents in projects of interest to the students, allowing the fixation of the taught contents.

Keywords:

Distance education, Computer-mediated teaching and learning, Experience report.