Emergency Remote Learning During COVID-19: Socio-educational Impacts on Portuguese Students

The pandemic caused by COVID-19 is not just a global crisis, it is `the first' global crisis, and as the mandatory confinement shifted all education to Emergency Remote Instruction/Teaching/Learning, Higher Education Institutions were faced with the heavy task of balancing the immediate massive technological-pedagogical request by teachers and providing students with the socio-educational support that they need. This paper analyses the socio-educational impacts of the current confinement period on student's lives and how they are responding to implemented ERL solutions, specifically in a stage of abundant pressing changes in which critical challenges are mostly felt. A close-ended questionnaire was built, comprising six dimensions of issues that may impact ERL: educational and organizational issues, technological and working conditions, social issues, family-related issues, psychological issues, and financial issues. Results were collected right after the first month of ERL and reveal that the most severe problems reside on the pedagogical and psychological domains.