Institutions and digital platforms: the spaces of higher education during the pandemic

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has had significant impact on various aspects of daily life, including the educational field. Its emergence prompted the shift of education to the digital space, emphasizing the centrality of platforms for interaction between teachers and students. The objective of this article is to investigate the ways and uses of digital platforms for teaching work and communicating with students at the University of Buenos Aires during the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, it focuses on the role of the institution in supporting teacher-student relationships based on a comparison between the Faculty of Social Sciences (FSOC) and the Faculty of Agronomy (FAUBA), as well as recognizing similarities and differences within them according to careers and teaching positions. Through a qualitative approach, an analysis of interviews with teachers from these academic units is carried out. The conclusions focus on the differences in institutional support from both faculties and their impact on the -different- preferences for platforms (mostly non-educational) that facilitated the maintenance of a relationship as similar as possible to that deployed in traditional education, replicating "in-person logics" in the virtual realm.