La Educación superior durante la pandemia de COVID-19 en Brasil: factores que influyeron en la participación de los estudiantes

Abstract

In early 2020, when the coronavirus pandemic began to affect every area of society, the situation in Brazil was no different from that of other countries. Covid-19 brought the implementa- tion of social isolation measures and led to readjustments in living and working conditions. In turn, this led to readjustments in the conditions of employees and users of public services who wished to access those services. In education, it also created new social inequalities resulting from teachers and students’ lack of access to the technologies, tools and programmes they needed. Other issues detected were health and financial problems due to unemployment as well as a lack of policies aimed at reducing the number of working hours. In view of this, the Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE), the Federal University of Paraíba (UFPB) and the University of Pernambuco (UPE), all of which are located in the northeast of Brazil, carried out an inter-institutional study of factors that influenced the participation of undergraduate students in online classes during the period of social isolation. The aim of this article is to present the partial results from this study in relation to stu- dent profile and the infrastructure available to those students to aid their participation in the online classes taught on their respective degree programmes.