Teaching Development of Distributed Software during COVID-19: An experience report in Brazil

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic affected all sectors of society worldwide, including education. Due to the social isolation requirement, several educational institutions used the Emergency Remote Teaching (ERT) approach to keep their courses active, at least partially. This document provides an experience report about using ERT in two courses (Distributed Systems and Software Development for the Cloud) that deal with the Development of Distributed Software Systems. In these two courses, we used three main approaches: synchronous online classes, asynchronous learning videos, and online material available on a Git repository. In some classes, we also adopted active methodologies such as problem-based learning and flipped classroom. Students were evaluated by seminars, tests, and programming activities. In the end, we collected their feedback from an online survey. Forty-two (42) graduate and undergraduate students reported a good level of acceptance of our ERT model. Part of the students had difficulties in doing their programming homework, and the main obstacles reported by them were: (i) their psychological context and (ii) to reconcile the course activities with home tasks as well as the demands of their jobs. Once practical experiences in ERT will be essential for a while given the uncertainty about how long COVID-19 pandemic will remain active, we expect the highlights and drawbacks of our experience could help other professors in planning their courses.