The health emergency caused by COVID-19 forced thousands of university instructors around the world to rapidly adapt their teaching practices to digital environments.
A study conducted by Carmen Ricardo and Camilo Vieira, researchers at Universidad del Norte (Colombia), examines how this remote teaching experience altered faculty beliefs and conceptions about online education.
Using a pretest-posttest design applied to over 80 instructors, the study reveals that professors' technological-pedagogical self-efficacy increased significantly after a semester of remote teaching, although a decline in their perception of institutional support was also observed.
Beyond the acquisition of digital skills, the study highlights several persistent challenges. Although the instructors demonstrated a strong reflective attitude toward their teaching practices, their perceptions regarding technology-mediated assessment remained ambiguous.
The difficulty of adapting evaluation methods to online formats, the risk of plagiarism, and the limitations of technological infrastructure were identified as major obstacles. Additionally, the findings show that satisfaction with remote teaching was directly linked to perceived success in adapting to the new environment and to the level of institutional support received.
This research offers a precise snapshot of the impact of the forced transition to digital education in higher education. It not only reveals significant progress in faculty competencies but also underscores the urgent need to strengthen institutional support and to rethink strategies for online assessment.
As the authors emphasize, the experience of the pandemic should be seen as an opportunity to reshape continuous teacher training and to move toward more flexible, critical, and sustainable educational models in response to future challenges.
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How to Cite: Ricardo, C., & Vieira, C. (2023). Higher Education Instructors’ Beliefs and Conceptions about Remote Education during COVID-19. RIED. Revista Iberoamericana De Educación a Distancia, 26(1), 17–37. https://doi.org/10.5944/ried.26.1.33966
