ACCELERATED VIRTUALIZATION OF HIGHER EDUCATION IN TIMES OF PANDEMIC: THE CASE OF AN ECUADORIAN UNIVERSITY

Abstract

"The purpose of the paper is to present and discuss the impact, challenges, and opportunities that the COVID-19 pandemic and related lockdowns have caused to the te aching and learning model of an Ecuadorian Higher Education Institution: the Universidad Andina Simón Bolivar (UASB). The discussion will be led from the perspective of various educational actors and different levels of decision-making. At the beginning of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic that confined a large part of the world's population to their homes and paralyzed activity in practically all areas of human action, forced a rethinking of education at all levels. In addition, the massive closure of schools and universities led to the deployment of distance learning modalities through a variety of formats and online platforms, replacing traditional educational processes. Experts have called emergency remote teaching for this sudden and unforeseen shift of face-to-face classes to virtual modalities. This name comes to highlights that the solutions adopted in a very short period, in many cases, could not be based on well-founded models of e-learning and a well-planned learning process. Still, rather traditional practices were transferred from face-to-face education to online platforms, maintaining their conventional forms in terms of methodologies, teacher and student roles, typologies of activities, evaluation models, and so on. The work presents the case study of the successful transformation process of a Higher Education institution based on a face-to-face model to a remote model to continue providing training to its students despite the disruption caused by the confinement derived from the health crisis of COVID-19. The analysis of the data collected through a variety of methods that included interviews with faculty, the analysis of institutional documents, and a student survey highlights the complexity and adequacy of the strategies implemented by the educational community to make the transition from an emergency remote teaching to a quality online learning ecosystem."