Challenges of Education in Energy and Environment: Comparison Before and After Pandemic Constraints
Abstract
Energy systems present a complex and dynamic interrelation between energy, environment, and society. Therefore, properly educating new professionals for the renewable energy sector is a challenging endeavor by itself. The COVID-19 pandemic has imposed an additional challenge on how to engage students in energy and environment education through distance learning. In this paper, we present the methodology applied at the Federal University of São Paulo (UNIFESP) for students of the discipline “Energy and Environment”. The graduate student interns developed an integrated methodology of disseminating knowledge about renewable energy and environment for those students and society as a whole. A positive feedback over 95% was obtained from the enrolled students in the period of 2019 – 2020. It was also noticed a failure rate of 24% in 2020 in contrast to zero occurrences in 2019, when face-to-face activities were in place. Finally, we present a brief discussion on the primary challenges and lessons learned during the studied period.