Abstract:

In 2020, COVID-19 affected practically all areas of activity, with particular impact in education. In what concerns higher education, after March 2020, three types of response to the pandemic were verified worldwide: maintenance of face-to-face education with social distance, hybrid models (mixed regime between face-to-face and online, limitation of the number of students in class) or switching to an online-only format.

In Portugal, where the predominant teaching modality in higher education is face-to-face, the declaration of a state of emergency by the national authorities in March 2020 in an attempt to control the virus spread led all universities to migrate to an exclusively online teaching regime, which implied changes in the methods and resources used almost instantly. Teachers, most of them unprepared for changes at this level, had to adapt practically from one day to the next, when previous studies estimate that adapting a face-to-face course to online teaching should take between six and nine months. Thus, according to experts, the teaching modality offered as a result of COVID-19 cannot be labeled as “online learning”, and a new concept has emerged to define it, “Emergency Remote Teaching”.

This study analyzes the impact on assessment, motivated by the switch to emergency remote teaching in the Financial Calculus curricular unit of a Portuguese polytechnic higher education institution in three business science courses. The analysis is carried out with academic results of students in the semesters in which the assessments took place exclusively online with those of previous years in which the assessments (and teaching activities) were exclusively in person. The study also assesses possible impacts of organizational factors on academic performance and explores possible explanations for the results of the analysis.

Keywords:

Academic Performance, Emergency Remote Teaching Financial Calculus, Higher Education.