Abstract:

This paper presents part of the preliminary data of a comparative and international research project on the students’ perceptions of remote education after returning to presential activities. The theoretical background consists of the dispute on remote education effectiveness and the risks of de-humanizing education.

On the one hand, the view is based on bureaucratization and efficiency, since remote education contributes to lower unit costs, although reaching an effectiveness apparently similar to presential education. reduce even more the costs. Part of the literature regards that they are adequate to training, not to educate, since it reduces persons to numbers, establishes a role of executers to the faculty, as well as limit innovativeness.

From the philosophical perspective, information and communication technologies face digital gaps between regions, countries and inside each of them. As a result, they are disappointing for the goals of quality, equality and inclusiveness.

From the methodological point of view, we submitted the research proposal to several higher education institutions. The instruments for students and faculty members contain open and closed questions, largely recurring to the Likert scale. We adopted convenience samples of students and in some cases of faculty members so that the results are not representative of institutions, region or country. The investigation is quantitative, favoring the use of questionnaires and scales validated in other studies by the authors. The data obtained were processed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS - version 29).

The Pandemic Student Survey analyses the data from 569 beginner students in the undergraduate and Masters programs in Mexico, Brazil and Portugal, specifically in the Northern District of Oporto, to identify correlations about their perceptions on remote education. We have identified relations between socio-economic status and gender, public and private education, and goal orientation of the students’ life. These variables are compared between during/after remote study by a quantitative, cross-sectional, and descriptive correlational among socio-demographic characteristics, study conditions, emotions, teaching strategies and sociability. As we do not measure academic achievement, due to strong intervening variables, predominantly of emotional order, we focus predominantly on processes than results. Preliminary conclusions suggest that remote education is a feasible, innovative reply to pandemic, yet it is necessary to be attentive to the risks of de-humanizing the educational process.

Keywords:

Remote education, Pandemic, Higher Education.