The Impact of Virtuality in Learning and Teaching Processes in Continuous Teacher Training Institutes San Luis 2020

Abstract

The objective of the current article is to present the results of two surveys which were carried out during the academic year 2020 to all the students and teachers from the Instituto de Formación Docente Continua San Luis regarding the impact of virtual learning and teaching.
The purpose of those surveys, which were carried out online by the end of the first and the second semester respectively of the mentioned year, was, firstly, to obtain relevant information about pertaining contextual, technological, and pedagogical aspects of the teaching and learning processes in online education to detect improvement areas and to identify strengths which would allow the optimization of the teaching practices. Secondly, based on the information gathered in the first semester, it was possible to make decisions at the institutional level to reorganize the second semester, thus making necessary to inquire about the impact of those measures on the educational processes which unfolded during the second semester of the year 2020, so that then it would be possible to assess improvement alternatives for 2021.
This is an exploratory study framed within a mixed methodological design (qualitative and quantitative).
The results obtained show that both students and teachers could progressively overcome the difficulties experienced during the first half of the year as they became familiar with the virtual environments, digital resources, and new communication forms mediated by technology.
Moreover, the measures adopted in the second semester based on the data collected in the first survey had a positive impact on the teaching practices and the students’ self-assessment of their own learning processes in a pandemics and social distancing context.