Reading in virtual classrooms

On preventive and obligatory social isolation

Abstract

Reading and writing at the university level are skills that should be taught in higher education. Teaching these skills is the responsibility of the academic community, tasked with cultivating an appreciation for literary or written culture even in the most adverse conditions. In Argentina, during 2020, the national government’s decree of Preventive and Obligatory Social Isolation (also known by its Spanish acronym, ASPO) meant faculty and students had to adjust to virtual and multimodal environments. This put traditional university practices — tethered to physical paper — to the test. And it forced the academic community to prove its competence in writing and reading on a screen. The following article regards an investigation on the act of reading in an academic context. It was carried out at the National University of La Matanza, an institution focused on social justice and providing a quality education, whose sizable student body mostly comes from working-class families. The investigation was based on non-probability surveys, analysed both quantitatively and qualitatively, especially when the situation called for a more thorough, specific study. Our results show the differences between academic fields and reveal some of the interesting benefits of virtual classrooms.