Online Teaching During Pandemic In Portugal: University Teachers' Perspective And Consequences

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has become a critical challenge for the higher education sector worldwide. Under such a circumstance, the exploration of the capacity of this sector to adapt to such a state of uncertainty has become more of huge importance. In this investigation, we critically reflect on the Portuguese teaching experience during the early COVID-19 lockdown in this country. This is an exploratory study based on a qualitative approach with an aim to reflect about new practices of teaching under a pandemic emergency. Based on the teaching experience in Portugal, we explore the evaluation process conducted throughout the pandemic period in Portugal, namely, the perspectives that teachers have about the online learning method, the challenges arising from online teaching, and, in fact, what evaluation methods were used during the pandemic period, and related implications.

These conclusions point to the fact that teachers had a fairly good experience with online teaching during the pandemic, although they struggle with interaction and socialization problems with that regime. Furthermore, teacher tend to reject clearly the fact that online teaching will take over presential learning, thus the interaction between students and teacher is extremely difficult to manage. Furthermore, this study points out the fact that professors clearly prefer presential evaluation systems, although younger and less experienced professors tend to be more flexible, and that evaluation methods that teachers tend to value more online are written tests and exercises as well as group and individual work presentations.