The impact of the covid-19 pandemic in a mathematics subject

ABSTRACT

This paper describes the main changes verified on the compulsory digital transition of teaching and learning in a mathematics curricular unit during the second semester of 2019-2020 academic year under COVID-19 pandemic. We highlighted the implementation process of online teaching-learning modes, including all procedures and practices that had been reshaped face to the new circumstances. Particular attention is paid to the main difficulties felt by the students and the teaching team in the adaptation phase to the new reality of distance learning. The analysis of outputs regarding the previous years and the comparison with the last assessment outputs lead us to conclude that the whole implementation has allowed mitigating an unfavourable scenario for educational success, in particular, the great social change in the student’s lives. We also present the conclusions regarding the students inquiries, which were passed anonymously at the end of the semester, where both quantitative and qualitative approach to study the perceptions of students about the online teaching-learning modes. As we can see from the answers to this questionnaire, the students missed the face-to-face classes and the contact with teachers and colleagues. They also felt difficulties in the changes that were made in the assessment with a view to moving to the online regime, but they also felt that the course as a whole went well, as evidenced by the success rate. Comparing the success rate with the ones from previous years, it’s shown that it decreases a little, although the drop is residual. © 2021 IEEE.