Forced migration to online classes: a case study in Music teacher education in the context of COVID-19

Abstract

As an emergency measure in response to the pandemic produced by COVID-19, most of the universities in the world had to close their campuses and reschedule their activities. Although official statistics indicate that practically all the institutions continued with their learning activities, responsibility for didactic and curricular modifications fell on the teachers who had been giving classes in face-to-face formats and who had no experience in teaching in online formats. This forced migration meant that the universities were able to continue training students on a more or less regular basis; however, the official statistics that speak of approval rates do not account for the effectiveness of learning in this new format. The combination of a case study in a career in music pedagogy at a PLACE and an investigation of grounded theory design seeks to describe, substantiate, and evaluate the modifications made to the different subjects from the teacher's point of view, visualize the difficulties they had during the period, and reflect on the effectiveness and projection of online teaching in musical disciplines. Our results point to a great diversity of modifications, highlighting several related to Active Methodologies, such as Project based Learning and the Flipped Classroom. They also report a feeling of significant work overload and a perception that learning is diminished in online contexts compared to face-to-face ones.