The advance of the COVID-19 pandemic has forced measures such as the implementation of teleworking and distance learning. These and other measures are considered essential during this challenging time, as they prevent the spread of the virus. The vast majority of the team at the FCCN Unit of the Foundation for Science and Technology is working remotely, and access to the infrastructure we manage is restricted.
There has been a growth in the use of our collaborative platforms these days, as teachers, students and workers from higher education and research institutions are using and adopting them to continue their work. collaborative work environments, trying to ensure the maintenance of teaching and research activities.
We are pleased to see real-life experiences of successful use of the platforms we provide. True to the premise "necessity is the mother of invention" and expressing gratitude for the "quality and responsiveness of the Colibri service," ISPA professor João Marôco, Ph.D., shared with the FCCN team the setup creative way he found to be able to give a trial class on Statistical Analysis 1. The recipe was simple: “a laptop, a smartphone and a Colibri account,” he listed.
“I log into the Colibri account via the laptop (host) and simultaneously on the smartphone (co-host), who films a blank sheet of paper. When I need to solve an exercise on the paper, I transfer the screen to my smartphone and "spotlight video." The students see the solution (with a 0.5-s lag) that I make on the paper," explains the teacher. The result is satisfactory and fulfills the purpose:
*Images kindly provided by professor João Marôco.
At the end of the class, students reported that they were able to follow the material. The class was recorded. to be made available laterOne of the participating students, Diogo, also commented: "Visually, I must say I was quite impressed. (...) It was great to have multiple perspectives: seeing the calculator—which was what I was most afraid of—and having the camera pointed at the written sections. I was very surprised by the sound quality and the quality of the call. In terms of student-teacher interaction, it works well. The only thing better than this is being in class with the teacher, but, as far as possible, this is the best possible situation," he added.
We take the opportunity to promote our channels on social media, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn We count on our community to share their experiences with the work tools and support services we provide so that activities can continue during this difficult period, which we will overcome together. We encourage you to use the hashtag #FiqueEmCasaFCCN whenever you wish to share positive use cases of our platforms and services, so that they can eventually be adapted by other teachers.
Our teams are committed to providing full support and providing the teaching and research community with the platforms and connectivity necessary to work remotely.
