Abstract:

With the confinement that generated so many fears and so many changes of habits in our daily lives and with the worsening of the COVID-19 pandemic, schools suspended, in Portugal, as indeed on a planetary scale, the face-to-face teaching activities and teachers of the various levels of education had to implement digital learning resources, inspired, in part, in the Distance Education modality (DE). Remote teaching was a way to promote social and physical distance and decrease the transmission of the pathogen. In this sense, this paper aims to understand the impact of remote teaching on the learning, psychological state and well-being of students who are attending, in the current academic year, the Degree in Social Education in a private higher education institution in Portugal. The option for this course is due to the fact that it is a course aimed at working with vulnerable publics particularly affected by this pandemic context. To conduct this study, the methodology used was the construction and application of a questionnaire to all students of this course. Data were collected via online questionnaire, composed of questions divided into multiple-choice and open-ended categories. The treatment of the questionnaire integrates the quantitative method (multiple choice questions) and discourse analysis for the open questions. The results show that the students of this course have a great sensitivity for the perception of human, social, economic relations. And they see some advantages in remote learning as the flexibility of time and ease in reconciling leisure and study. They refer that the teaching provides more autonomy in the teaching-learning process, although some answers reflect a contradiction between the valorisation of autonomy and the greater dependence on the teacher's indications arising from online classes. They emphasise the negative impact of remote teaching on the lack of interaction with others and report a frequent feeling of loneliness and apprehension about completing the course due to the fact that the institutions for professional practice (internship) are closed due to confinement.

Keywords:

Remote learning, Degree in Social Education, digital learning resources.