COVID-19 and digital distance education: pre-confinement, confinement and post-confinement

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought changes and disruptions in wide areas of human activity. Education has been one of the most affected due to the administrative imposition of the total closure of educational centres in most of the countries of the world. The modality of distance education, fundamentally in digital support, was able to offer emergency solutions to this crisis. In this paper, a reflection is carried out on the prior perceptions to COVID-19, related to this educational modality. Subsequently, ideas are provided on the way in which the educational response to confinement was mainly undertaken, through remote emergency education that considerably deviated from what was appropriate in designs and developments of quality distance education. Many mistakes were made and, therefore, there were too many negative perceptions from many students, families and teachers, quite a few of the latter, previously reluctant to these latest formats. Finally, the article addresses the most recent problem, related to post-confinement times, in which it is not foreseen that every student can go to physical classrooms in face-to-face centres in the same space and time. Suggestions are offered on how to address this problem, through hybridization solutions, mixed teaching and learning, combined or, better, integrated and flexible.