Permanent monitoring and evaluation actions provided feedback for improving the provision of the education service, and understanding the changes that the new scenario brought about. Plan Ceibal educational resources were those most used by teachers in Uruguay and its learning platform CREA was the fifth most-visited website in the country, reaching 88 percent of students and 90 percent of teachers in the national public education system.
Teachers felt more confident using the platforms, lost their fear of technology, and perceived that families considered it positive that their children had the chance to play and learn at the same time in an online environment, as can be seen from qualitative studies made by teachers on the use of Ceibal maths learning platforms. While classes were suspended, these platforms registered a 53 percent increase in primary school users, a 124 percent increase in secondary school users, and a 165 percent increase in tertiary technical education students. [1] [2].
Testimonies from teachers taken from the qualitative study made by Plan Ceibal[3] :
“The platforms were an excellent resource, I’ve now incorporated them in and I’m never going to let go of them.”
“As a teacher I learned a lot from the children and their families. The pandemic brought us closer together. Now there are parents who are co-educators.”
“The minute we realized that the tool doesn’t compete with you and that it’s a tool that improves your work, that was what mitigated the idea of not wanting to use it.”
As well as the exponential increase in the use of Plan Ceibal online learning spaces, according to the access data of hundreds of thousands of users changes were observed in habits, with users logging on later in the day and at the weekend, a trend that remained, although to a lesser degree, even after the return to in-person classes.
During the closure of school buildings—from 16 March to 30 June 2020—access to CREA among the students and teachers of the public education system was 88 percent and 90 percent respectively. In comparison with 2019, there was an increase of 109 percent among primary school users, 247 percent among secondary school users, and 345 percent among tertiary technical education users. The peak for most logins in 2020 came on 21 April when 307,022 users accessed the system, which represented an increase of 688 percent compared to the day with the most logins in 2019, on 28 May. [2]
Teacher perspective
Plan Ceibal carried out a national survey with a representative sample, consisting of 1245 primary and secondary school teachers. The main results were that its resources were the most used (93 percent) to support teaching activities in public education and that 92 percent of teachers were satisfied or very satisfied with the training activities provided by Ceibal[4].
In addition, the survey provided data on the online interaction between teachers and their students: 98 percent of public school teachers sent homework to their students, 90 percent received activities carried out by them, and 87 percent of teachers gave feedback.
Through the focus group studies of teachers on the use of Ceibal en casa (Ceibal at home)[3] maths platforms, it was shown that the teachers felt more confident about using them and had a sense of urgency in doing so due to school closures. In addition, many understood that the technology did not replace them, but rather supported them with specific, motivating resources that they couldn’t generate any other way. They also positively evaluated the autonomy that students achieved with activities adapted to their level, and their own better time management thanks to the management resources on the platforms.
Another change that was registered was the adoption of the videoconferences service to communicate among teachers and students. Ceibal en casa [2] incorporated a videoconference service in CREA to enable audiovisual interaction, through which a total of 141,000 videoconferences were held between 14 April and 26 October. The subsystem that most used this resource was primary school (62 percent), followed by secondary (28 percent), technical tertiary education (8 percent) and others (2 percent.)
1. Primary corresponds to the Initial and Primary Education Board (Consejo de Educación Inicial y Primaria, CEIP), secondary to the Secondary Education Board (Consejo de Educación Secundaria, CES) and technical tertiary corresponds to the Technical-Professional Education Board (Consejo de Educación Técnica Profesional – UTU).
2. Internal Report Plan Ceibal: “Narrativa Ceibal en Casa” (“Ceibal At Home Narrative”), November 2020.
3. Internal Report Plan Ceibal: “Use of PAM and MATIFIC Mathematics Platforms among teachers nationwide. Context COVID-19 2020.
4. The survey was conducted among 1,245 teachers. 636 answered the survey by phone, whereas the remaining were reached by e-mail and responded to the same questions on the SurveyMonkey platform. The results were processed by the Monitoring and Evaluation Department of Plan Ceibal.
