Effects of Covid-19 on the Online Library and Information Science Degree at the University of León (Spain)

Abstract

The Degree in Library Science and Documentation of the University of León started during the 1990–1991 academic year. This first curriculum suffered from a strong presence of subjects from the humanities, with a low fraction of experimental work in many subjects because of its inclusion within the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters. The first years attracted large numbers of students. However, the subsequent decrease in the number of students pursuing the degree drove us to initiate a change toward blended and online modalities.The Librarianship and Documentation Area of the University of León (ULe) already has a long history in blended teaching, starting with the Degree in Librarianship and Documentation, which has used the platform aul@unileon since the 2006–2007 academic year; the Degree of Information and Documentation has used the blended modality since the 2010–2011 academic year, and it has been offered in the distance learning modality since the 2014–2015 academic year.These new technologies have been fully introduced into university education and have facilitated the teaching–learning process through the use of interactive programs via the Internet.The main objective of this column is to determine and study the kind of multimedia tools used by professors of the Bachelor of Information and Documentation at the University of León during the teaching–learning process and in virtual teaching before the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as to report which new tools were introduced by the university for this reason. We study the student–teacher and student–student interactions to help promote communication and participatory learning through chats, forums, email, hangouts, Skype, Meet, videoconferences, etc.To carry out this study, two types of methodology were applied: satisfaction surveys implemented by the Quality Office of the ULe to determine the degree of satisfaction of students and teachers, and a study of annual reports.