Abstract:

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic many students have fallen behind [1] because they have failed their courses or deserted [2]. In higher education the students who have not deserted have problems taking online classes because they have to work in a separate job, have to help their families at home, do not have good internet connections, do not have good computers, tablets or smart phones or do not have an appropriate space to study. A lot of teachers in developing countries unfortunately have some of those problems too. The teachers have to dedicate time to create course materials adequate for students who might have some of the problems listed above and therefore have changed somewhat their pre-pandemic methodology to teach. Therefore some new strategies for teaching are being created during these COVID-19 times. In this paper some of those new strategies to teach a few courses in the engineering careers at the Mexican Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana [3] are reported. As an example, in a Probability and Statistics course detailed solutions of the many problems have been worked out for students to comprehend them faster and more easily, a course book for the students has been elaborated, as well as video clips to explain some concepts and the hardest parts of some solutions to problems have been created. A google classroom is also being constructed in order to better organize the course and make it simpler for the students. The main idea is that students have sufficient course material to self-study and the professor becomes mainly a guide and assistant in answering questions they might have. In this paper the strategies and indicators to reach the objectives are presented, as well as some results obtained so far.

References:
[1] D.N. Dominguez-Perez, N. Dominguez-Vergara, Education and technology during COVID-19 times, END 2021 Proceedings, pp. 396-400, 2021.
[2] N. Dominguez-Vergara, D.N. Dominguez-Perez, What works to keep students focused during the COVID-19 pandemic?, EDULEARN 2021, Proceedings, pp. 2524-2533, 2021.
[3] Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, 2021. Retrieved from uam.mx

Keywords:

COVID-19, teaching, learning, strategies, online.