Virtual ethnography in times of pandemic: a qualitative methodological design for the understanding of ethnographic stories about subjectivity and the collection of experiences in virtual education for students of HEIs

Abstract

Considering the changes that the current health situation caused by Covid-19 has brought with it in the face of processes in the educational field, generating an inevitable transfer of presence to virtuality to give continuity to activities and thus avoid the spread of disease due to contagion. A methodological design is propose from virtual ethnography, focused on the observation, description and interpretation of the dynamics of the classroom, whose main objective will be to understand the stories constructed by the subjects. Understood the subjects as social agents, from their place of enunciation, contextual and experiential in this space without detaching from their subjectivity; attending to the forms that the dynamics of teaching and learning have adopted in this new reality in which education has been primarily mediated by technology.

Likewise, it is intend that the development of this work can generate valuable inputs for those students of higher education institutions (HEI) who wish to undertake the realization of an ethnographic design with a virtual approach in educational contexts; thus avoiding becoming a procedure manual or a unique model to follow. Carrying out this type of ethnography represents the opportunity to sharpen the senses to understand those various experiences that will influence the development of the student. An invitation, to think about education, as well as the teaching and learning processes within this context of multiple eventualities and technological mediations.

Finally, it is conclude that this type of methodology is not a replacement for "conventional ethnography". Rather acts or presents itself, to virtuality, as one more field that requires attention to capture its own forms, paths and structures; with which it is invite to consider even more the opportunities and potential of this type of exercise, especially in this emerging context. Likewise, it is established feasible and pertinent to undertake a virtual ethnography project in times of pandemic within the framework of virtual education; hence the methodology that is developed in this article, which attends to an ongoing investigation.