Educational challenges in times of COVID-19: Teaching perspective of the Universidad de Colima, Mexico

Abstract

Introduction: The COVID-19 pandemic abruptly interrupted the face-to-face educational modality, and teachers had to adapt to a new form of technology-mediated teaching in response to the imminent confinement. In this regard, the University of Colima in Mexico launched an Academic Continuity Program to guarantee student attention at the high school, undergraduate and postgraduate educational levels. Objective: The study describes the technological, pedagogical-didactic and socio-emotional situation faced by higher level teachers in the development of this university program, as well as the training needs and the main challenges of teachers in intermediate education. Methodology: A mixed exploratory study was carried out, the result of applying a questionnaire to 1 587 teachers, of which 1 195 responses were obtained. Results and discussion: The investigation showed that 63% of the teachers faced didactic-pedagogical complications; 17% technological and logistical and 7% emotional at the time of conducting the “new” way of teaching. Conclusions: The challenges of the teacher in the face of the pandemic make it possible to visualize the demands for training, qualification, updating and development of teacher skills, as well as the appropriation of technological resources that limits the development of teaching-learning processes in accordance with the expected educational quality. Likewise, it is proposed to continue with this line of research aimed at identifying creative practices and teacher training needs, from the students' perspective, and thus strengthen the academic offerings of the Institutional Teacher Training Program in order to improve the performance of university professors.