COVID main challenges in a Portuguese HEI

Abstract

The main challenges in the health crisis, as experienced in a Portuguese public university observed during this period, are presented in this paper. The pandemic forced the suspension of university calendars and work routines in higher education institutions, requiring several changes, both in the ways of interacting with students and professors, and in the structure of interaction with the surrounding community. Institutions of higher education are microcosms that reflect well the great trends of social change. The text is supported by the analysis of documents, as well as the content analysis of meetings and interviews conducted with students from a Portuguese university. The results show that, at the same time as the pandemic changes introduced that will be momentary and that require successive adjustments, they also led to changes that will be more definitive and that could represent, in fact, the transformation of the patterns of organization of academic work.