Thirtieth International Conference on Learning

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has deeply affected teaching and learning experiences worldwide. When the lockdown was established in March 2020, it took a few months for the public university where I work to move classes online. Our institution used this time to offer courses to prepare professors to teach online, to redesign our virtual learning environment, and to get computers and Internet packages for students who could not afford them. When classes finally moved online, professors and students had to learn to teach and study in a new environment. In 2022, after almost two years of teaching and studying online, we returned to face-to-face classes, and had to relearn to teach and study in this environment again. In this context, the objective of this study is threefold: a) commenting on my main concerns, experiences and challenges, as a professor in an English Teacher Education Program, teaching on-line during the pandemic, b) discussing how the lessons I learned teaching online have influenced my face-to-face classes after the pandemic, and c) bringing some reflections on the information gathered from a Google Form questionnaire I sent to student teachers of our program regarding their experiences online and in a face-to-face environment. My discussions and reflections are based on the theoretical framework of the pedagogy of Multiliteracies/LbD, taking into consideration the affordances of e-learning and the concept of pedagogical ecologies. The discussions and data shared contribute to expand the reflection on teacher education in our post-pandemic world.