The various transformations marked by social, economic and political life in the last decades, have given a prominent place to education, both in the education systems and in the institutions themselves as complex and modern organizations. In times of uncertainty, there are several proposals around education. It is also in this scenario that distance education (DE) comes to assume a fundamental role for the development of education itself. Thus, Distance Education emerges as a response to the pandemic situation experienced in our country since March 2020, raising the question of the motivation of Higher Education students in relation to adaptation, motivation and experiences related to Distance Education. Through an exploratory-descriptive investigation of a qualitative approach based on the application of a scale of motivation to learn - EMA-U (adapted), it was our intention to assess the levels of motivation expressed by the students of the Polytechnic Institute of Maia regarding the change for distance learning mode due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
