The Transition From the Conventional Classroom to Remote Teaching: How to Improve Online Practices

Introduction

In 2020, students had their studies interrupted due to covid-19. It is estimated that more than 1.5 billion students worldwide have been affected by the closure of educational institutions (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization [UNESCO], 2020a) due to the need for distancing. The challenge arising from this crisis was unprecedented.

The closure of educational institutions has led to searches for emergency responses in education. One of the alternatives adopted was optimizing technologies, mostly connected to the Internet, as much as possible to teach without needing physical presence (Muñoz-Najar, 2021). Efforts were aimed at the continuity of educational activities and the safety of everyone in the face of a global pandemic.

In the poorest countries, where there were already educational crises (World Bank, 2018), this rapid change resulted in new questions. The asymmetry of economic conditions among students affected access to infrastructure and broadband capacity, and the different training of teachers implied different pedagogical and digital skills. This scenario showed that the impact of covid-19 could cause more global inequalities (World Bank et al., 2021). However, even before the emergence of covid-19, several students worldwide had already experienced the interruption of their educational activities due to the closure of educational institutions (UNESCO, 2020b). The covid-19 pandemic was not the first and will not be the last circumstance to represent a crisis for educational systems worldwide. Thus, it is essential to develop crisis-sensitive educational strategies that minimize educational impacts, including in higher education.

Considering critical situations as the one experienced, the teaching-learning process and teaching work need to be increasingly supported by interaction and dialogue. Moreover, despite all the issues and concerns raised, the situation caused by covid-19 can be an opportunity to rethink the dynamics of online education and even the face-to-face classroom.

The main objective of this chapter is to discuss the transition from the conventional classroom to remote teaching and to analyze how this experience can be leveraged for new online practices. It is based on a case study of an Industrial Engineering undergraduate course at a Higher Education Institution (HEI) in Brazil. This proposition contributes to the discussion of how higher education can be developed through an online and collaborative teaching-learning model.

This chapter intends to share a constructivist perspective inspired by the Team-Based Learning methodology (Michaelsen & Sweet, 2008), based on the experience developed over the years 2020, 2021, and 2022 with 170 students. The constructivist pedagogical currents, associated with authors such as Piaget and Vygotsky, value the student's learning action instead of the teacher's interest and suggest learning through problem-solving in authentic contexts. The socio-constructivist theory, mainly associated with Vygotsky, interprets that learning is more than a cognitive and individual process, being a construction influenced by culture, interaction, and new social experiences (Peres & Pimenta, 2016). Thus, in this text, the constructivist perspective considers that the student constructs knowledge, that interactions are essential, and that methods should support this construction. This proposal tends to move away from instructivist teaching, which is more lecture centered. A student-centered constructivist approach considers the professor with a facilitator role. However, constructivism is frequently misunderstood. For this reason, this proposal also considers that certain appropriations of constructivism are superficial, without appropriate attention to the curriculum and the conditions required for its practice (Krahenbuhl, 2016; O'Connor, 2022).

This proposal can benefit higher education in the various aspects that make up the learning path, the student assessment process, and the work with the learning material. However, the proposal can contribute principally in two ways. First, a teaching-learning model is more resilient when applicable in online, hybrid, or face-to-face contexts in the post-covid scenario by any HEI, both in developing and developed countries. Second, to discuss how higher education can be improved with an integrative teaching proposal, using methods based on a constructivist approach, valid anywhere the student is considered the center of the educational process, even in times of crisis.