Lessons in the Use of Technology for Science Education during COVID-19 Age under a Teachers’ Collaboration Cluster

Abstract

The COVID-19 confinement has represented both opportunities and losses for education. Rarely before has any other period moved the human spirit into such discipline or submission—depending on one’s personal and emotional points of view. Both extremes have been widely influenced by external factors on each individual’s life path. Education in the sciences and engineering has encountered more issues than other disciplines due to specialized mathematical handwriting, experimental demonstrations, abstract complexity, and lab practices. This work analyses three aspects of science education courses taught by university professors in a collaborative teacher cluster, sharing technology applications and education methodologies in science over three semesters when the COVID-19 lockdown was in effect. The first aspect was a didactic design coming from several educational frameworks through adoption or sharing. The second one was an analysis by discipline of multiple factors affecting student engagement during the health contingency. The third analysis examined the gains and losses in our students caused by the university closure and the pandemic’s intrusions. The report explores the correlations of the exiting student perceptions with their academic performance in the courses and survey results about the impact of decisions or happenings during the crisis. This work’s value lies in the lessons for the future of education concerning the teacher dominions of didactic design, support, and collaboration in a broader sense than only for teaching.

Keywords

• scientific education
• COVID-19
• educative innovation
• technologies
• methodologies
• higher education