Impact of COVID-19 on the teaching and learning of a graphic engineering course

The current situation derived from the COVID-19 crisis is generating unprecedented challenges throughout the educational community, although higher education institutions have demonstrated their ability to adapt very quickly and with great flexibility to the crisis. Since the beginning of the pandemic, students are experiencing new learning environments and employing a broad set of resources whose impact on their overall learning has yet to be discovered and is being investigated. There are also many unknowns to solve about how the lockdown has affected them. This research provides new evidences on this unprecedented phenomenon about aspects related to their learning and their effect on confinement in a Graphic Engineering subject through a cross-sectional survey conducted with a students’ group (n = 264) during the pandemic period using triangulation of data analysis. A quantitative comparison of the final marks of the students has also been made between the emergency situation and the one before the confinement. The results show a clear and direct relationship between academic performance of the students in pandemic period and variables such as the degree of attention, the time spent on assigned tasks and the conditions of the workspace. The best evaluated training activities are the project and the exercise videos. In general, women are more satisfied with their academic performance and evaluate the practices more positively than men. Although the responses of women have been found to have somewhat more variability than those of men, no meaningful results can be extracted. Final marks and the marks of the autonomous learning competence of the subject increased slightly at the beginning of the pandemic period compared to previous periods, but in the following quarter of confinement the marks were maintained or even decreased with respect to the pre-pandemic period. Finally, the study identifies best practices that will be of value for distance teaching and engineering education beyond the pandemic situation.Objectius de Desenvolupament Sostenible::4 - Educació de QualitatObjectius de Desenvolupament Sostenible::5 - Igualtat de GènerePostprint (author's final draft