Abstract:

Role Play is a resource of special interest when it is intended to show students in the classroom situations close to those they will face in real life, allowing them to rehearse in scenarios that they would face in their first years of professional development [1,2]. In Construction of Concrete Structures subject of the Escuela Técnica Superior de Edificación of the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, the Role Play practical exercises have been commonly used to expose to the students a building construction on site work problem.

They had to approach and solve it from the point of view of the different agents that intervene in the building process and that adopt different professional attributions and interests according to the Building Planning Law (Ley de Ordenación de la Edificación).

The situation happened these last two years due to the COVID-19 pandemic, has prevented the creation of informal work groups within the classroom. At first, the protocols established for the face-to-face teaching, forced to keep an interpersonal distance of 1.5m between students, as well as not sharing the work material, which made it impossible to group students by practical cases.

To continue with the programmed teaching methodology and in order to maintain the practical activities of the evaluation, it has been opted for the implementation of practical work using the creation of small groups in the tools of the videoconferencing applications, which has forced to rethink the organization of the activity to adapt to the new methodology [3].

This article shows how the use of computer videoconference applications allows continuing with group activities in the classroom and how they should be adjusted to the new methodology reality in times of pandemic where it is not feasible to work in teams within a classroom.

Keywords:

Videoconference, Role play, group activities, pandemic.