Digital tools in higher education in the context of Covid-19

Abstract

The Covid 19 pandemic has been affect drastically the running of higher education institutions in scientific, pedagogical and management terms. It became urgent to respond to the pandemic, particularly in terms of teaching and learning. One of the first options taken by higher education institutions was to implement non-face-to-face teaching, also called remote emergency teaching. The objectives of this research are to identify students' perception of the frequency of use of digital tools and assess the level of satisfaction on the use of these tools. The study is essentially of quantitative nature. Data were collected through a questionnaire from a sample of 677 students from a Portuguese public higher education institution. From the results, it is highlighted that during the pandemic the use of the tools: Colibri / Zoom and Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) was very frequent. In a post-pandemic scenario, the tools that will have the most preference for use will be VLE and email. Regarding the satisfaction with the use of digital tools during the pandemic, the tools with the highest level of satisfaction by students were: VLE, Colibri / Zoom, email and Office 365. It was also found through the analysis of the correlation among the variable's frequency of use and satisfaction that the higher the frequency of use of digital tools is, the higher is the level of satisfaction.