Impact on Education and Ecological Footprint as a Consequence of SARS-CoV-2 in the Perception of the Quality of Teaching Engineering Students in the Brazilian Amazon

Abstract

The world experienced several economic, social and environmental transformations during the COVID-19 pandemic, and today, society assesses all these changes in the different stages of the pandemic process. In this sense, this research aimed to evaluate the educational and environmental impacts on the academic community of the largest educational institution in the Brazilian Amazon. The perception of the quality of teaching of undergraduate and graduate engineering students during remote teaching was assessed by means of an exploratory research work carried out at the Federal University of Pará (Brazil). Ecological and carbon footprint indicators were also measured through the Global Footprint Network®. In social terms, students pointed to a reduction in the quality of teaching. Despite the incentives through institutional initiatives for both students and professors, the community was not prepared to fully migrate to the virtual world, and that made the teaching–learning process difficult. In environmental terms, the reduction in the ecological footprint that was observed could have reached values higher than those that were found, to the order of 2.33%, with the mobility sector achieving the greatest reduction.