“In this historical time”

A new reality to be thought about for the use of digital technologies in undergraduate courses

Abstract

Due to the recurring cases of Covid-19 in Brazil and in the world, there has been a need to adapt and transform educational spaces through the insertion of technological resources in the teaching and learning process, both in Basic Education and in Higher Education. This mechanism ended up increasing inequalities, creating a false sense of inclusion. In order to better understand the situation, we sought to investigate the social representations of university professors of a federal institution located in Bahia about the use of digital technologies in a scenario where students and professors return to face-to-face teaching. We made available to the professors a questionnaire prepared in Google Forms through institutional e-mail and via Whatsapp. To dimension the analysis, as proposed by Bardin, we elaborated a word cloud, highlighting the categories Student (most expressive terms: teacher, learning, difficulty) and Class (most expressive terms: technology, tic, access, face-to-face, activity, pedagogical). The answers were interpreted in the light of the Theory of Social Representations. We conclude that teachers see the Digital Information and Communication Technologies as a didactic-pedagogical resource that provides an opportunity to diversify classes, but that can also cause exclusion among students.