Dificuldades e desafios de estudantes na disciplina morfologia e sistemática dos vegetais avasculares no cenário de ensino não presencial emergencial: um enfoque nas atividades práticas

Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic required the implementation of the Emergency Remote Teaching (ERT), which demanded the adjustment of the classes in a short time and impacted the routine of students and professors. Here we aimed to analyze the possible difficulties and challenges faced by students of the course of Morphology and Systematics of Avascular Plants in the new ERT scenario, focusing on practical/lab classes. This course, like most in the Biology curriculum, lacks software or materials available to supply the lab part. In this study, we applied online questionnaires at the beginning and at the end of the course, performed remote interviews and field diary records during synchronous classes. From 30 volunteer students enrolled, 9 answered the two questionnaires and were considered for analysis. For the analyses, we created categories based on the answers of the students in the field diary using the methodology of content analysis. The results indicated that the main difficulties and challenges that the students faced throughout the semester were related to the lack of face-to-face contact with colleagues and professors, the instability of internet connection, difficult access to technologies, the difficulty in staying focused on the classes and in organizing the tasks, in addition to the absence of an appropriate study environment. Regarding lab classes, a complementary difficulty was the lack of experiencing the observation of the organisms in a microscope or magnifying glass. To overcome the problems, the questionnaires and reports applied during the semester and the audio-visual didactic resources helped the students in the learning process. However, it was evident that some skills were not developed in the ERT scenario. Despite the difficulties of this atypical teaching scenario, the learning process was satisfactory in the perception of the students. This research may help professors teaching remote lab classes to overcome the main problems reported by students in future and similar remote teaching situations.