DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION OF UNIVERSIDADE DE SÃO PAULO: FROM FACE-TO-FACE TO VIRTUAL LESSON

"Online learning has been around for a while, but it's never been more important than it was in 2020 and 2021. While many students have been able to complete their degree requirements, the pandemic has presented new challenges for educators, students, and administrators alike. E-Aulas (Virtual Lesson in Portuguese) is a platform that helps teachers, students, and colleges adapt to the new challenges presented by COVID-19. The platform helped the management of the Universidade de São Paulo (USP) undergo a process of digital transformation to offer online classes for students. USP has served students since 1934 and is a leading educational institution in Brazil. The platform, which enabled professors to upload, with automatic metadata generation, registration, storing, and streaming video lessons, was implemented in 2012 with the aim of serving professors and students at USP. This platform, developed by a research group at the USP Polytechnic School, is currently managed by the pro-rectory of undergraduate studies. It can be used to support new teaching methodologies such as Flipped Classroom or Blended Learning, or for students to review face-to-face recorded lessons or as supplemental material for teacher’ classes. Before the pandemic, there were several e-Aulas users who used the platform on a regular basis. However, during the pandemic, this number increased dramatically. During the period 2020-2021, there were an average of 1.030 videos published per month, and 91.660 new users. There were as well 95 million hits during this same period, that is an average of 7 million accesses per month. E-Aulas has helped USP to make the transition to remote learning much easier. Therefore, it's clear that E-Aulas has been an invaluable resource for teachers who had to adapt their lessons to accommodate remote learning during the pandemic. In this case study we'll look at how E-Aulas helped USP navigate COVID-19 and still modernize the teacher methodology, enabling the use of learning active methodologies, by providing a safe way for educators to teach classes online while still maintaining high quality standards and student engagement levels."