Adaptation to emergency remote teaching by students with distinct ICT backgrounds

Abstract

The year 2020 has been a year of disruption in our World, at all levels, from society, economics, and education. The World, as we knew it, left to never return. The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the existing major differences in life styles, working conditions, etc. The education sector was severely shaken, with all courses abruptly sent to an online framework, despite the scientific area or level of education. Every player in Education sector had to adjust their performance. Teachers and students were unexpectedly thrown to online communication platforms, namely Teams, Zooms, and asked to continue classes on a new framework, without a priori preparation. This teaching style is defined as emergency remote teaching (ERT), contrasting to the planned and designed online learning. The echo from this teaching paraphernalia is felt in learning quality, motivation and engagement in students, peers’ support, communication, and time management.In this paper, we focus on adaptation to ERT by students attending two Baccalaureate degrees in Engineering, one in Informatics and one in Biomedical Engineering. We gauge the influence of students’ ICT (Information, and Communications Technology) backgrounds in the way they perceive their learning process. The analysis of the data collected, from a survey made to the two groups of students, reveals common challenges faced by the students, from learning physical conditions to difficulty in focusing during online classes, and heartfelt absence of the social part in Education. The higher ICT level from the students attending the Baccalaureate in Informatics Engineering, with respect to students attending the Biomedical Engineering, may explain why 7% of these students choose an exclusively online regime. Nevertheless, the other 93% prefer either b-learning or face-to-face. Students in Biomedical Engineering did not consider the exclusively online learning hypothesis.