Abstract:

On March 11th 2020, ten years after the implementation of the syllabus derived from the Bologna Process, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 a pandemic for the first time. Three days later, the Spanish government decreed a state of alarm leading to, among other consequences, the suspension of face-to-face classes at all educational levels across the board. Suddenly most teachers and students found themselves in an unprecedented situation that demanded swift action, for which few resources were available and great efforts were required.

This work presents the adapting process to the new sanitary crisis for a subject within the syllabus of an official master degree at the Universitat de València, for which the teaching-learning process occurred both before, during and after the adaptation to the health emergency situation.

It must be noted that, in this case, higher priority was given to the use of some Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) over others. As an example, Audience Response Systems (ARS) requiring the student’s presence saw their use diminished while video tutorials, prepared by the teaching staff themselves, became a more frequent resource aimed mainly at complimenting the part of the syllabus related to the use of software. At the same time, questionnaires were prepared to better assess the student’s progress in absence of direct face-to-face communication.

A preliminary analysis of the gathered information allows concluding that the adapting process was successful. In terms of academic performance, all of the students attending the first examination session (80% of those enrolled) passed the subject, similarly to previous promotions.

With regards to the students’ perception, their assessment of the ICTs was found to be slightly less positive than it was compared to the previous promotion, but positive nonetheless. On the other hand, they regarded video tutorials in a more positive light in terms of how useful they found them to better understand the concepts taught during the course.

Keywords:

ICTs, face-to-face learning, remote learning, adaptation, exploratory analysis.