THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC AND THE NEW PARADIGMS OF BRAZILIAN HIGHER EDUCATION

Abstract

Brazilian higher education is going through a peculiar moment in its history. The COVID-19 pandemic made Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) change the modus operandi of their academic structure and transpose it to virtual environments. This movement brought to universities a great challenge of technological immersion, which was consistent with their structural reality and that of their faculty and students. For this, these institutions began to formulate strategies seeking to overcome the criticality of the period, introducing Emergency Remote Education (ERE) combined with the use of technological tools such as Microsoft Teams, Google Meet. etc., which went from pedagogical support instruments to crucial tools in the maintenance of teaching or, migrating to a distance learning environment. The use of these strategies was a milestone in revealing the technological level of public and private HEIs and the look that these institutions had in the scenario prior to the advent of the pandemic, on the virtual insertion in the academic environment, in addition to pointing out a historical milestone that produced and will produce effects on the university’s pillars of teaching, research and extension. In this way, this article analyzes how higher education in virtual environments in Brazil has been occurring and how the pandemic crisis has affected universities in order to tread paths that permeate Distance Education (EAD) and Emergency Remote Education, it also presents a discussion if these strategies will only be in the pandemic period or if they will go from emergency to essential in post-pandemic academic curricula.