Participants

Fifty-nine (59) students, regularly enrolled in undergraduate courses at the School of Engineering, Unesp, campus of Ilha Solteira, participated in the study, filling out forms where they could narrate their experiences in the ERE. Of the 59 students, 39 (thirty-nine) are students from the Animal Science course and 20 (twenty) are students from the Mathematics Degree course. Below, we present Table 01, which characterizes the course period, in semesters, and the Bachelor's and Bachelor's modality. We point out that the absence of columns for the second, sixth and tenth semesters is due to the fact that no participant in the study, either in the undergraduate or graduate course, declared to be in one of these three periods (semesters) of academic life. We also point out that the percentages that appear below are based on the total number of study participants (59).

Because we understand that the experience that students have already had with classes in Higher Education is a factor that can influence the way they narrate their experiences with the ERE, we sought to characterize this. Table 1 shows that more than half of the participants are between those enrolled from the first to the fourth semester, and a considerable number of them (40.68% of the total study population) are in their first semester of higher education, that is, they have experienced CLT even before experiencing face-to-face classes.

The invitation to participate in the study

The invitation to fill out the form - available via Google Forms - was made to students enrolled in courses offered by one of the authors of this article. The teacher taught a subject, offered in the curricular matrix from the sixth semester (and does not require prerequisites), for students enrolled in the Mathematics Degree course, and another subject, offered in the curricular matrix from the first semester (and does not require prerequisites), for students of the Bachelor of Animal Science course; she is also part of the Permanent Teaching Commission and of the campus Congregation, participating in all discussions about the ERE in the Unesp unit of Ilha Solteira. Therefore, he always had a concern about how the ERE had been conducted and how the students were feeling about it. In this sense, at the end of each of the disciplines students were asked to think about their experience with the ERE and fill out a form (available via Google Classroom platform).

This occurred, more specifically, at the end of August, which, according to the Unit's calendar approved in an extraordinary meeting of the Congregation, marks the end of the first semester of 2020. We emphasize that, although this study is an isolated initiative of the teacher in the disciplines under her responsibility, the students answered the form about the ERE in general, not focusing or privileging aspects, facts or impressions only of the disciplines taught by this teacher.

Analysis of the students' answers: the Benjamian Monads

According to Petrucci-Rosa (2011), Walter Benjamin developed the philosophical construct called Monad taking Leibniz's "Monadology" as a basis and this construct has served and has served as a basis for narrative analysis (^{BARBOSA, 2021}; ^{LIMA, 2021}).

^{Barbosa (2021)} recognizes the Monads as one of the most relevant theoretical constructs elaborated by Walter Benjamin, together with Constellations. ^{Lima (2021)}, on the other hand, takes this construct as a powerful methodological framework to organize and analyze data constituted to investigate educational experiences.

Based on ^{Petrucci-Rosa et. al. (2011)}, we understand Monads as small fragments of stories that, when articulated, offer the possibility of telling about a whole of which they are part:

Monads are conceptualized as the elements of things, indivisible and indissoluble, simple substances and without parts, which conform the real in its totality. Since reality is multiple and differentiated, such minimal elements differ among themselves and are subject to natural changes (^{PETRUCCI-ROSA et. al., 2011}, p. 204).

From the contributions of ^{Goodson and Petrucci-Rosa (2020)}, we can understand the Monads as imagetic narrative fragments, where "the monad is particle that together with others, brings possibilities of understanding social, cultural and political contexts" (^{GOODSON; PETRUCCI-ROSA, 2020}, p. 95).

Thus, in this study, the answers to the form were read and analyzed, as to similarities and singularities, comparatively, agglutinating them into Monads. In this way it was possible to synthesize and characterize four Monads that allow us to glimpse some positions of the students when facing the experiences in higher education during the pandemic. Below, in Chart 02, the Monads are organized and a characterization of each one appears in sequence.

The first Monad nucleates the narratives about the self-evaluation of learning by students, i.e., it will nucleate the statements that make mention of the evaluation of the period in which students performed activities of Emergency Remote Learning, considering their learning in this period. The second will focus on bringing together the students' positions about the main differences between attending undergraduate courses in the pre-pandemic period and during the pandemic, that is, face-to-face classes versus ER classes. The third, will seek to congregate narratives about the understanding of the ERE proposal as mitigation of learning losses during the pandemic period, i.e., loss mitigation. Finally, the fourth and last Monad will seek to gather positions about the students' experiences in the ERE, mainly aligned with the pessimism of understanding it as a year of undergraduate teaching activities that had been lost, emptied, or by the optimism of considering that this experience enabled new ways of learning.

In an attempt to organize the results, we have listed the complete answers from each form from 1 to 59. Thus, when we need to refer to an answer, we will do so by relating it to the number in which it is tabulated. It is worth mentioning that the data from the participants of the study were presented entirely in the way the answers to the forms were given, that is, following faithfully the writing and the accentuation.

Self-Assessment of Learning

Initially, we will present a chart that illustrates the students' response to the experience with the ER regarding learning during the pandemic period. Besides the negative or positive positioning that can be perceived during the reading of the answers, the answers to the questions tried, in general, to present some of the justifications that could be evidenced in the narratives. The participants of the study had three possibilities to classify their own learning evaluation during the ESS: Good, Average, and Poor. These classifications could be apprehended from the answers expressed in relation to the evaluation of the ME, considering the learning in this period, and the positions were separated according to the course in which these students are linked.

[ ...] what made it difficult was often the lack of internet, but always trying to keep up with what I can. (Excerpt of Answer 14)

[ ...] not everyone has a quality internet and sometimes lose class or the date of delivery of work because they end up without internet [...]. (Excerpt Response 50)

[ ...] many people do not have a quiet or calm place to develop the activities, in my case for example, I live with my parents, my 3 sisters and my nephew, I do not have a room of my own, then have silence and peace to study is very difficult, when I need silence I go to my grandmother's house, but there is no internet [...]. (Excerpt Response 36)

[ ...] learning was a little difficult, because it was kind of hard you stay in front of a computer paying attention to what the teacher said, and had several things that took the attention. (Excerpt Response 37)

[ ...] it was well suited to the period and was very flexible, enabling most to follow the subject. (Excerpt of Answer 53)

[ ...] all the learning in remote teaching seems to be vague, I myself could not reconcile many things [...]. (Excerpt of Answer 59)

[ ...] either for lack of preparation, either because of the troubled times we have been going through, or because of the accumulation of activities [...]. (Excerpt from Answer 46)

[ ...] in subjects that require a practical understanding was more difficult to assimilate the subjects. (Excerpt of Answer 4)

In some subjects it was quite easy to do the remote teaching, but in others it was much more complicated because we were not doing the practical activities. (Excerpt of Answer 17)

[ ...] in the case of internship, for example, it was very complicated to fulfill the hours because the schools were not very open, they did not communicate with us interns, so we were lost. (Excerpt of Answer 29)

The narratives that allowed the elaboration of Chart 03, enunciated difficulties, understood as harmful to the learning process, arising from several factors. For example, access to the Internet network. Another difficulty pointed out in the arguments was the lack of an environment that would provide the necessary conditions and structures to develop the activities of the ERE. Some other difficulties were raised. As an illustration, situations were reported in which teachers were not ready to help and solve doubts as they did during the prepandemic period, a factor that the narratives attributed, on one hand, to the excessive workload, and on the other hand, the lack of preparation to make the most of the technological tools that were available at the time. In addition, it is possible to observe the valuation of the practical components in learning, where difficulties were described regarding the practical nature that is often seen as a facilitator, and in the RPE it ceases to exist.

The responses also focused on tracing differences between attending undergraduate courses in a face-to-face setting and through classes via RES. Many students reported a preference for face-to-face learning, listing a set of difficulties that they observed, experienced and stated in their answers to the form.

Thus, in summary, regarding this set of excerpts on the self-evaluation of learning of undergraduate students participating in the study, we can state that a good portion of those interviewed agree that learning was affected and impaired, mainly, by the inexistence and impossibility of conditions: material, such as access to the internet; structural, such as the absence of a specific space to carry out the activities of the ERE and; formative conditions, on the part of the University teachers, that besides being going through a troubled and delicate moment, the formative absence of university teachers to deal with the available technologies, somehow affected the students' learning.

Face-to-face vs ERE

Although I only spent a short time in college in face-to-face classes because of the pandemic, I liked it much better than the remote learning. (Excerpt from Answer 7)

I didn't have much contact with face-to-face because it is my first semester in college, but this remote teaching was very complicated. It lacked the practical classes that would give us a better notion of some of the subjects covered in specific classes. (Excerpt of Answer 47)

In this pandemic, like all of them, there were financial difficulties that we had and that, at least for me, forced us to try a service that would not bring risks to me and my family [ ...] (Excerpt of Answer 13)

As our course is not ODL, we were not prepared for this type of distance learning, for lack of support for students and also for lack of experience of the teachers [...] (Excerpt 11 of Answer 28)

In person you have the possibility to go to the teachers' room, get together with friends, study the content. Ead is very complicated because everything is new has no contact with friends to make study groups do not have teachers to ask questions in time that is not in class. (Excerpt Response 42)

I also believe that the number of activities required in some subjects was exhausting, much more than if we were in person, which also exhausted us. (Excerpt of Answer 29)

The difference is quite big because in the face-to-face class the amount of activities to be done was not so many and the ease of understanding the content was greater. (Excerpt of Answer 45)

The face-to-face class gave me a lot of interest and a better understanding than the remote learning. For the face-to-face was something we lived the university having the practices and an approximation with the professors, while the remote teaching kept these experiences away. (Excerpt of Answer 49)

The difference between the two is that one you are in the classroom, present, focused and not everything distracts you, now in Remote Learning, the student sitting in front of the computer screen ends up getting tiring, more frustrating and everything distracts you. (Excerpt of Answer 31)

The differences are big, when I was going to university it was much better, because I am going to a place that is appropriate to receive knowledge, in remote learning, we don't have that appropriate place. (Excerpt of Answer 8)

I find myself in a position where I can have a good remote learning experience, because I have internet and a quiet place to attend classes without any problems, but on the other hand, there are people who are not in the same situation and remote learning becomes more difficult. (Excerpt of Answer 57)

Obviously face-to-face class is much better, you can do the practical classes, solve doubts, and at home I don't think it is a study environment, there is too much distraction and noise. (Excerpt of Answer 5)

I liked it, because I kept studying, I didn't stand still. (Excerpt of Answer 12)

When we turn our attention to the profile of the students who participated in the study, we can see that a good number were in their first semester of undergraduate studies - Chart 1. However, even so, the answers affirm that despite having had little (only a few days in March) or almost no experience with face-to-face higher education, they declare a preference for the latter.

Besides the difficulties already mentioned, it is possible to observe the report of financial difficulties, the lack of preparation - training - to deal with the new ways of doing the undergraduate course, and the excessive volume of activities in the ERE. It is also observed that several justifications exalted the activities in the face-to-face format, since they complain that one of the difficulties they face is the lack of an appropriate environment for study, besides the fact that the Emergency Remote Learning makes learning difficult.

In an attempt to synthesize the information, in the selected answers, it is possible to observe the preference of students for the face-to-face format for several factors, but mainly, for the possibility of carrying out practical activities during the formative process in higher education and for the fact that the ERE requires formative conditions, on the part of the students, institutional, on the part of the University, and structural/financial, as previously announced. Moreover, students argue that in the face-to-face format, the experiences are more fruitful. However, there are still those who recognize that the ER made it possible to maintain a relationship with the contents to be studied.

Loss Mitigation

The ERE came as an attempt to mitigate the loss of the semester/year, in my view we do learn with the ERE, but not everything and the same way we would learn in faceto-face teaching (Excerpt of Answer 25).

The face-to-face classes are undoubtedly better, but the remote teaching I defend, even though there were flaws, it is necessary, because due to the current situation, being without classes is much worse, because there is no prediction of return. (Excerpt Response 32)

In some ways the face-to-face teaching is superior, but the ERE was a good alternative so that it does not occur such a long delay in graduation, so I end up being in favor of the ERE. (Excerpt of Answer 56)

It lacked the practical classes that would give us a better notion of some subjects covered in specific classes). (Excerpt from Answer 47)

The course without the pandemic is much better, because we learn more with the practices. (Excerpt of Answer 48)

The biggest difference I noticed was the issue of practical classes, since my course has a large area of practical classes and distance learning limited their execution. (Excerpt of Answer 52)

Below, we present a chart that expresses the results of the positioning of the students participating in the study about the belief that the greatest goal of the ERE was to minimize the losses in learning during the pandemic period.

In short, seeking to gather the students' positioning on the fact that the ERE has acted to mitigate the losses to learning, it is observed in the responses an almost unanimity of narratives agreeing with the belief that the Emergency Remote Learning was used, essentially, to reduce losses in the learning process in the academic year 2020.

It is noteworthy here that the justifications for the students' position in Chart 04 are based on the impossibility of carrying out the practical activities foreseen in the Political Projects of the Course, and that, as much as ways of providing access to practices through the ERE were sought, the experiences were not as fruitful as in the face-to-face format.

"Lostyear" vs new ways of learning

New learning about how to use technologies [...] (Excerpt from Answer 6)

[ ...] I believe it lowered the level of learning due to lack of interest. (Excerpt from Answer 4 )

In some practical subjects it was a lost year. (Excerpt from Answer 7)

It was not a lost year, but we had a lot of loss of content [...] (Excerpt Response 27)

I am in a situation that I will probably have to stay an extra year because of the internship that I could not develop remotely, if that happens I will have to stay an extra year in college [...] (Excerpt of Answer 36)

Not totally lost, because the theoretical ones were well done, but the practical ones that are with problems to be done. (Excerpt of Answer 40)

The complicated thing was [...] the lack of practical classes. (Excerpt of Answer 47)

It can be apprehended from the answers a certain feeling of "lost year" among the students in contrast to the experience of new ways of learning - Monad 4. That said, even though some students claim that other learning has occurred, established through experiences with digital technologies. However, a considerable portion of the narratives reaffirm how the RPE demotivates the learning process. Besides the various difficulties and understandings about the learning process itself, the concern with the realization of curricular internships and the activities related to the practical components of the subjects is notorious.

Trying to punctuate the position reflected in the excerpts selected and brought above, it is worth noting, with a large majority, that the expression "lost year" does not faithfully translate the students' position, but, neither do they agree that essentially the experiences with the TE offered new ways of learning. It is observed that the losses were essentially in some contents, mainly directly related to the practical components.