The future of higher education: How to move forward

This article reflects on possible and necessary transformations, based on the experiences lived by teachers, students, and educational institutions throughout the year 2020, as they survived, learned and adapted to the COVID-19 pandemic. Teaching should be based on pedagogical evidence, collaborative practices, educational technology, supported by computer infrastructure and evaluative practices that foster learning, through feedback and a closer interaction between learner and teacher. The direction pointed in the future includes and is based on blended education to help students to achieve competence for professional practice. The development of interpersonal skills will be fundamental, especially in the training of health professionals. Offering opportunities for faculty development and creating communities of practice for collaborative learning will also be essential. The greater flexibility of curricula and the technological mediation of the teaching and learning process should favor exchanges and the internationalization of institutions. In this way, both undergraduate, graduate and stricto-sensu education tends to expand its scope and will no longer be limited to its original niches, expanding to national and international agreements. University spaces and face-to-face moments will be adapted to a new reality, which allows the student to acquire essential clinical and relational skills, and which require activities in the professional practice settings. In the HPE, ensuring these training moments will continue to be a fundamental requirement. Thus, classrooms, laboratories and internship fields must be safe, allowing direct guidance and supervision by teachers and preceptors. It is possible and probable that, for a long time, it will still be necessary to maintain some social distance, use of personal protective equipment, hand and environment hygiene so that students are not deprived of these experiences during their training. In the health area, it will be necessary to reaffirm that there is no dilemma between the training of health professionals and patient safety, as we experienced with the interruption of most practical activities in the HPE undergraduate courses in Brazil, during the first semester of 2020. Training health professionals, in a context of a health & sanitary emergency, is equivalent to caring for people in any context or setting. It is the same if we are talking about access to personal protective equipment or access to vaccines. The challenges are launched and the possibilities for advancement emerge and need to be taken advantage of from a cohesive work between university managers, faculty, administrative staff and students.

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

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.

Teaching and learning in the context of remote education and distance learning: Paths and possibilities

All accumulated knowledge about the teaching and learning process, considering the best teaching practices and the concepts of adult learning, meaningful learning and student-centered learning must be continually exercised and revisited, regardless of the format: face-to-face, remote teaching (ER) or distance learning (EaD). The need to expand the use of emergency ER, determined by the pandemic crisis of 2020, has brought new challenges for teachers and students worldwide. Among the challenges is the reinterpretation of the concepts present in the teaching and learning process under the lens of the digital world. This review aims to present the best practices from the perspective of the new context of digital life in teaching for the health professions, including here the opportunities offered by the pandemic.