Abstract:

The global COVID-19 disease brought new challenges to higher education teaching and learning in academic teaching and learning practices. In social sciences, in recent years we have noticed in higher education teaching a slow introduction of ICT, namely of the computer and the internet, as well as game-based learning. Opportunities and constraints both for lecturers and students have been enlightened. Since the beginning of 2020, strong restrictions on physical mobility of students and teachers and the obligation of social distancing owing to the risk of contagion of COVID-19 were noticed. E-education and e-learning became regular offers in higher education and in many countries a technologisation trend through a widespread use of technology, by the use of platforms such as ZOOM or MEET, as well as e-learning has resorted.

Within this frame, the following research question arose: how contextual changed in higher education due to restrictions of the 2020 pandemic impacted on lecturers’ teaching and on students’ learning practices? To answer to this question, an exploratory research project named “Teaching and learning practices in uncertain times” was established in two Universities located in different continents, in Europe (Portugal) and in South America (Colombia). This research addresses the changes in teaching and learning in higher education caused by COVID-19 pandemic. Focal interviews with 30 university students of social sciences degrees such as education and training and anthropology were made; two lecturers’ diaries and interviews were collected. These data were treated by content analysis.

Data discussion stressed changes in teaching through the preference for a clearer connection of courses’ contents to students’ expectations when developing knowledge and skills. Pedagogical strategies included more traditional ones based on teacher-centred conceptions (as oral presentations, questioning of students, exercises and tasks to be achieved by students.); as well as learning-focused conceptions (by promoting dialogue between teacher and student, among students, fostering learners’ active compliance and reflective construction of knowledge, students’ autonomous work and self-directed learning). On the lecturers side, even if a maintenance of pedagogical strategies of face-to-face teaching previous to the pandemic were emphasised, a more expressive focus on students’ performance by the accomplishing of a greater number of tasks individually and independently was also made. On the students side, if some seemed to enjoy self-directed learning and greater freedom in managing study time, which has been carried out mainly at home, others showed concerns with the lack of motivation and of interest in contents taught and in learning.

In sum, teaching and learning in higher education acquired new meanings owing to contextual changes caused by the pandemic of 2020, in specific with regard to the relationship between proximity and distance that the use of electronic platforms implies. Therefore, other challenges and opportunities, especially with regard to the dynamics of teaching and learning practices, among students and teachers emerged. Critical reflection on the lecturers’ and students’ practices is to be stressed, that is, on the impact of this pandemic on teaching and learning in the future of in higher education.

Keywords:

Higher education, teaching, learning, pandemic.