Teaching preparation as a driver of university academic activities in time of pandemic

Introduction: The COVID-19 pandemic caused profound changes in different activities of daily life. One of the areas that faced the greatest challenges was education in general, and within it higher education. Faced with this situation, university teachers had to face an intensive preparation process to face the challenge of virtual education and continue with the educational training process. Objective: To determine the opinion of university students and teachers in relation to the importance of teacher preparation as the central axis of academic activities in times of pandemic. Methodology: Basic, descriptive and explanatory research that included 57 university professors and 232 university students belonging to the medical career of the Faculty of Public Health of the Higher Polytechnic School of Chimborazo. Result: 80.70% of the teachers had no previous training and 66.67% had no previous experience in the use of virtual environments. 84.34% of students believe that teacher preparation influences the quality of virtual teaching activities and 55.12% of students considered that there is a need to improve their mastery of virtual environments. Conclusions: The course offered by the Higher Polytechnic School of Chimborazo led to the improvement of the level of preparation of teachers around the management of virtual environments necessary to offer a quality education.