Teaching Practices University Innovations in the Pandemic Context from a Socio-technical Approach

This research refers to the environment of the course "Redesigning the Digital University" whose objective is to provide university teachers with elements to identify the main transformations in the framework of online learning and teaching in emergency conditions, COVID-19. From this framework, a problematization of educational principles and teaching practices is proposed, facilitating inputs to implement redesign processes of teaching and evaluation in digital environments. The research group integrates a Professional Academic Learning Community (PALC) where it is possible to register, analyze, and share about the processes of the redesign in university education. The objective of this research is to identify the possible innovations in the organizational aspects, the learning process, educational communication, and/or instructional design implemented by teachers of the University of the Republic (Uy), considering that the pandemic constituted despite all intrinsic drawbacks, a window of opportunity. The methodology used is ethnography for the study of virtual environments. The scenario is the course where the experiences, practices, activities, proposed wikis as well as work developed by the course participants are observed. In the work some theoretical conceptualizations are made, then the course is described, some methodological aspects are explained and the data analyzed from a sociotechnical approach are presented. The exercise of the teaching role in the university environment constitutes a field of study that, when mediated by technology, transforms it into a network actor that is integrated with machines, positioning the traditional classroom in another place. Undoubtedly, this research opens up future possibilities for work in diverse educational contexts.