Estratégias e tecnologias desenvolvidas por uma universidade pública do interior da Bahia para o enfrentamento da pandemia de Covid-19

Abstract

Introduction: The University, as a place and space for the production and reflection of knowledge and relationships, experienced a process of compulsory adaptability induced by the Covid-19 pandemic between 2020 and 2023. The transformations imposed by the pandemic culminated in the development of strategies and technologies aimed at planning internal and regional care to ensure the continuity of teaching, research, and extension activities. Objectives: To analyze the strategies and technologies developed and used by a public university in the interior of Bahia to face the Covid-19 pandemic; to understand the challenges/difficulties and strengths/facilities; and to build an infographic with the strategies and technologies developed. Methodology: This is a study with an exploratory qualitative character, carried out at the Federal University of Western Bahia (UFOB). Data collection took place between April and June 2024, through semi-structured interviews and document analysis. The study participants were divided into three groups: six professors (Group I), six administrative technicians in education (Group II), and six students (Group III), totaling 18 participants. The data were analyzed using Thematic Content Analysis, resulting in four categories: 1) Strategies and Technologies: unraveling concepts; 2) Coping with the COVID19 pandemic by a public university: (re)planned strategies; 3) The intertwining of soft, softhard, and hard technologies; 4) Labyrinth of difficulties and facilities. Results: The strategy was explained as the use or application of situational change, aiming to achieve the objective situation, in which technologies assume an instrumental role in its materialization, encompassing relationships, communication, knowledge, assets, and structure to achieve the established objective/plan. The strategies were defined to ensure the maintenance of university activities, in which the suspension of in-person activities, remote work and teaching, and the formation of a Working Group for COVID-19 Management stand out. The technologies include soft technologies, aimed at welcoming the university community, softhard technologies, demarcating centrality in the institutional health surveillance strategy, and hard technologies, with a main focus on the diagnostic processing of respiratory samples and production of protective resources. The challenges and difficulties in managing, proposing and replanning the continuity of teaching, research, extension and innovation activities extend to the need for “clothing” that defines the new ways of working and studying, but we also envision practices that facilitated and contributed to their sustainability. Final considerations: Finally, it is observed that the maintenance of university activities assumed centrality in the configuration of (re)planned and executed strategies, instrumentalized by the technologies present in the management decision-making processes and in the mobilization of resources. It is believed that the commitment to propose management and control for transformation was permeated by a (re)(de)construction and (re)learning from mistakes and successes, difficulties and facilities, in order to operationalize new realities and possibilities amid the pandemic scenario.