Challenges in higher education facing new teaching scenarios during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

The teaching scenarios in the context of the health pandemic generated by COVID-19 have forced the development of a change in the academic paradigm in higher education that has not only had repercussions on the development of the contents of the subjects, but also on the way the different agents involved (teachers and students) interact with each other. This is a participatory research in context on a subject of the teaching degree at the University of Cadiz where the challenge of improving academic results from previous years and changing the attitude of students, very unfavourable due to low success rates, is faced. After the creation of the participatory scenario and a specific plan for the subject, the academic results and attitudes showed a change in the students’ formative conception, focusing on the main finding of the new methodological design. In this way, this research can be replicated in other contexts as it is considered a good educational practice that integrated the communicative, informational, interactive and collaborative potential of virtual environments to face the challenge of teaching a subject with low academic success rates in an emergency situation. Thus, the results show a change in the learning culture that aims to be institutionalised in normalised contexts.

COVID-19; Pandemic; Higher education; Education; Participatory research