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Abstract(s)
The COVID-19 pandemic period has had a massive impact on educational environments, and Higher Education has not been an exception. During the lockdown period, academic activities were mainly provided in a remote teaching environment. This transition has raised new challenges for students and lecturers. The present study is particularly focused on lecturers’ perceptions. Namely, it aims to understand their perception of the teaching and assessment process during the first lockdown due to COVID-19, in a Portuguese Higher Education Institution. More specifically, we aim to explore the main difficulties and challenges associated with remote teaching environments.
This research was based on a qualitative approach. For the data collection, we gathered information from semi-structured interviews. The data were collected through a semi-structured interview conducted in September 2020. We obtained 24 interviews from teachers at Porto Polytechnic University, the country’s largest Portuguese Polytechnic Higher Education Institution. Data were analysed according to content analysis procedures using specific software for data conduct and content analysis.
Our results showed that full-time lecturers had more teaching and administrative workload and enormous challenges when compared with part-time lecturers. Most of the teachers were satisfied with Emergency Remote Teaching. The main difficulties referred by the teachers were the time adaptation to acquire the technological skills required in remote teaching and an increased workload concerning class preparation. Nonetheless, the most significant challenges encountered were the lack of student interaction during the classes and the difficulty in redesigning a fair and correct assessment for every subject within a remote environment.
Therefore, the more experienced lecturers were the least satisfied with the teaching and the assessment during the first lockdown. Furthermore, technological issues and problems related to teacher-student interaction were perceived as challenging. These results reinforce the need to stabilise the teaching staff in Higher Education Institutions and to develop new strategies and models for Higher Education.
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Keywords
Remote teaching Remote assessment Lecturer High education
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IATED