At Tec de Monterrey, we have already had virtual classes for more than 30 years, so a good percentage of our academic community has experienced the modality, as Beatriz Palacios commented. Director of Educational Innovation and Digital Learning at the Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey (ITESM).
“Despite the above, as an institution the challenge was great when the pandemic arrived because it implied mobilizing in a single week, the more than 50,000 sessions that were normally face-to-face and the 90,000 students and 10,000 teachers who not all had previous experiences in formats to distance.
Face-to-face classes
Beatriz Palacios commented in an interview with The Economist that returning to face-to-face classes has been a great challenge in terms of gradually measuring the way to deploy them according to the conditions in each city where we have Campus. However, for the students, it has been pleasant to regain the socialization and face-to-face interaction to which they were accustomed.
“It has not been easy and for both students and teachers, it has been a great challenge to get used to living the return with the necessary limitations for the care that they must continue to experience for prevention and health reasons.”
Hybrid classes
For the directive to build the entire flexible offer and be prepared for the gradual return to the classrooms, “a work team was integrated from the schools and some central areas, destined to organize everything: planning of the offer, definition of the percentage of courses for each modality, selection of suitable subjects for each modality), preparation of teachers with tools and training in the modalities; equipping classrooms and spaces in general for hybrid classes; group scheduling, etc.
At Tec, a special model was designed to ensure the students’ experience in an approved way in digital modalities, “trying to maintain the greatest amount of synchrony so as not to drastically affect what the student and teacher were already experiencing in the face-to-face context; In other words, we relied on our models that we already had in digital, but making some aspects more flexible that would facilitate adoption for those who were not familiar with the modality.
“On the one hand, formats were designed for totally distance courses, which were supported by the use of synchronous sessions that replaced the face-to-face sessions and in which active learning and the use of various tools that facilitated distance activities were promoted; On the other hand, two formats were designed for hybrid courses, always focused on the student who required it to be able to stay at a distance; in these hybrid formats, the distance student had access to the face-to-face sessions which were taught from classrooms that were designed to facilitate simultaneous interaction between the professor and the face-to-face and remote students ”.
Planes
By January 2022, “ITESM is working on building a mostly face-to-face and hybrid offer with some totally remote sessions that are pertinent to the modality and that allow us to continue offering options for those who still cannot return to normalcy,” he concluded Beatriz Palacios.
Reference-www.eleconomista.com.mx