Volta ao ensino presencial: desafios enfrentados sob a ótica de discentes e docentes de um curso de ensino superior da área da saúde

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic caused several changes in people's daily lives, bringing problems in various social spheres. Education was one of the most affected sectors due to the necessary suspension of face-to-face pedagogical activities. Many undergraduate programs need to include face-to-face activities, as the health courses which have practical activities in their curricular structure. The students and professor’s lives dynamic suffered direct impacts since the beginning of COVID-19 pandemic to the effective face-to-face return. The discussion among the COVID-19 pandemic consequences in the returning to face-to-face teaching and learning is extremely relevant, because it is necessary to identify the main challengers faced by both student body and faculty, during the returning to the face-to-face activities. In July 2020, the Ministério da Educação (MEC) launched a biosafety guiding protocol to the classes returning in 69 federal universities and 41 federal institutes, which had guidelines for collective social distancing in academic settings. After many disease peak waves, the Universidade Federal do Ceará (UFC) published guiding documents to the face-toface activities return, according to the ordinance n° 61/2022, published in March 7, 2022. In March 16, 2022, UFC started to return to everyday academic life. The main goal of this study is to identify the main barriers faced by the students and professors of the Pharmacy course of Universidade Federal do Ceará during the returning of faceto-face activities. An exploratory cross-sectional study was designed with a quantitative and qualitative approach. The data collection occurred by an online quiz developed by Google’s platform (Google Forms). It was directed and accepted by 120 students and 19 teachers of the Pharmacy course of Universidade Federal do Ceará between May and August, 2022. The quiz found out students and teachers’ social-demographic data, academic activities, and their main barriers identified at the time of transition from remote to face-to-face teaching. 139 answers were obtained, being 86.33% of students and with very few professors’ accession. The obtained results showed a predominantly female student population, with young people between 18 and 25 years old, studying the second half of the course and with professors varying from 30 to 71 years old. Other variables were analyzed generating data such as: more than 50% of the participants affirmed that they feel bad among crowded places and that they have difficulties to getting close to people. Of the participating teachers, 79% have practicalactivities in their classes, and most of them believed that students their learning impaired in the remote semesters, so they needed to get more attention to them after the face-to-face return. The students demonstrated the same sensation and reported needing to make an effort in face-to-face classes. In view of the above it is possible to conclude that many challenges related to face-to-face return were reported, such as: the re-adaptation to the old format, lack of infrastructure, feeding, transportation, in addition to negative learning impacts and mental health caused by emergency remote teaching.