A Blessing or a Curse — A Virtualization Study of the Activities of the Confucius Institutes in Latin America and the Caribbean during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

The disruption caused by the Pandemic of COVID-19 accelerated the virtualization of educational services worldwide. In Latin American and Caribbean countries, higher education institutions have moved, in a very short period of time, from organizing their activities on campus to online or remote provision. In this scenario we find the Confucius Institutes, international cooperation partnerships between local and Chinese universities, fostered by the Chinese International Education Foundation with the objective of promoting Chinese Language and Culture abroad. This paper presents the results of a study concerned with the remote activities carried out by the Latin American and Caribbean Confucius Institutes, from January to July 2020, the first semester of the COVID-19 pandemic. The research method was a questionnaire sent to the local directors of the Confucius Institutes in Latin America and the Caribbean. Among the main conclusions of the study, it was found that Emergency Remote Teaching (ERT) was the general response of the CIs studied to the COVID-19 pandemic. The challenges faced by these institutes to quickly virtualize their activities were the lack of materials in the local language, lack of time to prepare classes properly and access and Internet connection. It is expected to accelerate the virtualization of CIs in the offer of classes and cultural activities because the technology works as a more inclusive tool, while the pandemic state served as a trigger for the development of other forms and teaching methodologies.

Keywords

Confucius Institutes / impact of COVID-19 pandemic / remote activities / virtualization of higher education

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