Information and communication technologies in distance education and in emergency remote education

This research aimed to discuss the differences between emergency remote education (ERE) and distance education (DE), by means of the analysis of the digital information and communication technologies (DTIC) as a possible cause of confusion between such teaching modalities. Besides that, this paper also analyzed the risks and estimated possible impacts resulting from the economic, technical and cultural barriers imposed on students and DE itself due to the adoption of emergency remote education because of the social distance related to the pandemic of COVID-19. To this end, initially, a bibliographic survey was fulfilled to obtain the theoretical foundation on the differences between DE and ERE, based on the use of the DTIC, considering the existence of a possible confusion between such teaching modalities. Next, a quantitative data survey was carried out based on the information available in the distance learning census of the Brazilian Association for Distance Education and the National Continuous Household Sample Survey of the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics, so that it was possible to analyze the risks and estimate possible impacts arising from the first order barriers imposed on students and DE itself due to social distance. Among other results, it was possible to see that the ERE is unlikely to be able to provide average results for Brazilian education. This disregards the effects of second-order barriers that are commonly imposed on the use of DTIC in communication between schools and families.