Remote Education in times of pandemic: the experience of the Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo (PUC-SP)

Abstract

The Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo (PUC-SP) is a community university. In March 2020, the social distancing caused by the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic imposed several challenges to be faced related to the migration from classroom teaching to remote teaching: technological (and pedagogical) training of the teaching staff, support for students, training of the staff and the adequacy of the Information technology infrastructure. In this work, we will deal with faculty development. Although there was no institutionalized faculty development structure, a group of teachers involved in the various training courses promoted since 2017 by the institution, under the Deanery of Undergraduate coordination, was responsible for training to help teachers to use the
institutional platforms. Individual training was also proposed to meet specific needs. Following the first bare step of familiarization with the platforms, the next phase was to raise the need for qualification of remote activities in the teaching staff through innovative teaching methodologies. Maintaining remote education led to the expansion of the group of teachers responsible for supporting remote activities. Furthermore, post-graduate (masters and doctoral students) acted as monitors from the different courses of the university. They were selected to assist teachers individually to make the appropriate use of teaching strategies and technological platforms. In the PUC-SP undergraduate medical course, which has at its core the use of active teaching and
learning strategies, except for part of the practical activities, all were carried out remotely. The adaptation of the problem-based learning tutorials was satisfactory. One of the most significant apprenticeships was the collaborative teaching work for carrying out summative assessments.