Ensino e aprendizagem online em tempos de coronavírus: um testemunho de Macau

Abstract

At the beginning of this year, unexpectedly and suddenly, teachers and students from Macao, like the rest of China, were forced to switch from face-to-face to online classes in order to face the pandemic caused by a new type of coronavirus. This study arises from the need to reflect on the second semester of the academic year 2019/2020. With this purpose in mind, we address some advantages and disadvantages of online teaching/learning (Kozlova & Zundel 2013; Meskill & Anthony 2010), and share how we tried to manage our new situation. In the second part of this study, from an open-ended question and using “content analysis”, we confirmed the difficulty that most students faced during this atypical semester: malfunction of the network connection, that made the learning process hard. In addition, we learned that our participants prefer face-to-face interaction with colleagues and teachers. In terms of the benefits of this online teaching and learning process, respondents highlight time saving, flexibility, convenience of mobile devices and internet, as well as the possibility of continuing their studies while feeling safe.