Abstract
COVID-19 highlighted higher education’s resistance to implementing the student-centered and ICT (information and communication technology)-enabled learning practices as incentivized by the Bologna Declaration. ICTs were crucial to keep the students in educational programs during the outbreak; however, some students were left out, increasing socioeconomic differences, and many teachers needed the training to provide online lectures effectively. Despite those barriers, the current context could be an opportunity to invest in new teaching and learning practices. The main goal of this research is to analyze how teachers and students from veterinary programs in Portugal adapted to the digital environment, and perceive whether this change imposed by COVID-19 could provide teachers and higher institutions with new solutions to implement effective student-centered and ICT-enabled learning models. Results show that veterinary programs are based on student-centered practices by nature, but that the use of ICTs is still incipient. Teachers, students, and members from the Professional Order claim that the worst change brought by COVID-19 was the cancellation of hands-on sessions, impoverishing the students’ education during the time of mandatory confinement. Actors say that it is important to invest in innovative teaching and learning practices enabled by ICTs in the future.
Highlights
Educational innovation is a top priority worldwide because it is considered pivotal to promoting competitive and inclusive economies [1]
In order to be accredited, each institution must prove that the veterinary program answers the standards defined by EAEVE for several different items organized in 10 dimensions: (i) objectives, organization, and quality and assessment policy; (ii) finances; (iii) curriculum; (iv) facilities and equipment; (v) animal resources and teaching material of animal origin; (vi) learning resources; (vii) student admission, progression, and welfare; (viii) student assessment; (ix) academic and support staff; and (x) research programs and continuing and postgraduate education
(European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System) credits) and have a curricular plan based on lectures and seminars about (i) basic subjects, (ii) specific veterinary subjects, and (iii) practice sessions such as supervised self-learning, laboratory and desk-based work, non-clinical animal work, clinical animal work, and an internship
Summary
Educational innovation is a top priority worldwide because it is considered pivotal to promoting competitive and inclusive economies [1]. Several studies reveal that many teachers still use traditional learning models in most national higher education programs because classes are based on expositive and curriculum-centered pedagogical practices and students assume little responsibility for their own learning process and tend to mobilize memorization techniques during evaluations [6,7]. This has slowly been changing since the Bologna Declaration, but researchers found that learning methods are still far from student-centered education in our country because many teachers and students are still not prepared for these new pedagogical practices [2]
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