Abstract:

In these trialling times of COVID-19 universities had to adapt fast to new teaching conditions due to long term lock-down. Spain was in full lock-down for four months (March to June of 2020), spanning the totality of the second semester. This prompted the university to shift in-person classes to on-line classes in a matter of a few days. The objective was to keep the classes’ curricula intact so that students were able to receive the content of the class as it was scheduled in the beginning of the academic year. This has put a strain in both teachers and students, demanding a complete adaptation of classical teaching materials to their on-line versions and long study hours due to novel evaluation procedures (apart from the obvious technical difficulties, ranging from Internet inaccessibility to misunderstanding of technological platforms like Moodle). The most severe technological impact was suffered by traditional classes like Mathematics and Philosophy, were blackboards are the cornerstone of the teaching process. Furthermore, there was a radical change of these classes’ dynamic, where human interaction through questions was the norm - a feat impossible in on-line videoconferences, leading to an unpredicted response by the students.

This paper brings to light the point of view of students and lecturers in this process. For that, two different subjects were considered: Mathematics, taught in the first course of the degree in Computer Science Engineering; and Intelligent systems, taught in the third course of the degree in Robotics Engineering. So, a total of 140 students were considered for this study. The experimental results highlight that more than a half valued positively the lecturers’ effort in the subject adaptation to online modality (52,3% in the case of Mathematics; 51,7% in the case of Intelligent Systems). However, the difficulty to follow the lessons was greater in the case of Mathematics (43%) than in the case of Intelligent Systems (20,7%). The main reason lies in the nature of the subject, as the study shows.

Keywords:

On-line classes, e-learning platforms, Learning assessment.