ABSTRACT
With the recent COVID-19 pandemic and disruption of campus-based education, the use of mobile social networking applications to supplement formal education has attracted a great deal of attention. Teachers do have opportunities to join students' online groups to share, clarify, and exchange housekeeping information and course-related content with them. Teachers can, in particular, provide English as a foreign language (EFL) students with more sources of linguistic input, interaction, and feedback. Research investigating this potential, however, is still scarce in such contexts. The current study explores the likely affordances of teaching presence in students' WhatsApp groups for designing, facilitating, and guiding cognitive and social processes conducive to their language learning. A mixed-method design was employed to collect both quantitative and qualitative data and information from English-major undergraduates (N = 111) and faculty teachers (N = 8) who joined the same WhatsApp groups for one academic semester at a major university in Oman. Descriptive and thematic analyses of data from a survey with both closed-ended and open-ended questions and semi-structured interviews indicate that the shared WhatsApp groups functioned as small close-knit communities where students were able to constantly access teachers for their assistance, feedback, and clarification of content. Despite these merits, however, the participating faculty believed that the presence of teachers in WhatsApp groups might have consequences for students' tolerance of ambiguity, scaffolding, and autonomous language learning. The paper concludes by discussing several pedagogical implications and directions for future research.
ABSTRACT
Among mobility data sources, Floating Car Data plays a very, and increasingly, significant role, and has been extensively used to obtain traffic information. In this study, FCD has been used to shed light upon the youth mobility changes occurred during the first two years of the coronavirus pandemic by focusing on five selected high schools in Modena Municipality (Italy). Mobility indicators computed within the areas under investigation show that two out of the three schools' areas are not associated to a significant variation in the number of detected distinct private probe vehicles from November 2019 to November 2021 (-3% and +1%), whereas within the Modena Municipality results show a 8% decrease. However, one out of the three schools' areas shows a significant decrease in 2021 when compared to 2019 (-11%), suggesting a noticeable decrease in private vehicles traffic density that could be due to an increased use of personal mobility vehicles, such as bikes. Moreover, results within the Modena Municipality suggest that in 2021, even if the number of detected vehicles was lower than in 2019, each vehicle not only covered a longer distance on average, but also the total distance covered by all the vehicles together was longer (14% increase).
ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION: The handling of the pandemic in Italy has implied, by Decree of 4 March 2020, the interruption of all school activities;one of the most complex and hurtful measures by virtue of its impact on such a vitally important milestone. MATERIAL AND METHODS: As regards to the reopening of schools, for the year 2020-2021, a risk classification model for sector of economic activity, elaborated by INAIL, has been applied, in accordance with criteria of probability of exposure, proximity, mass gathering. The above approach has been adopted by the Technical Scientific Committee established by the Government as support to coordination activities to overcome the emergency. The integrated risk level of the education sector has been rated as medium-low, but its mass gathering risk level is considered to be medium-high. RESULTS: The measures for the reopening of schools have regarded different aspects: Systemic measures (territorial support system, new recruitement of school workers, contact with the NHS, mobility plans);Organisational measures (ex. classroom layout, timetable, consumption of meals);Preventive and protective measures (distancing, disinfection and hand hygiene, use of mask, information and training), Territorial control measures (monitoring of suspected cases, contact tracing, follow-up of absences). CONCLUSIONS: The resumption of school activities has required a complex balance of safeness, students’ and school workers’ well-being, quality of learning contexts and processes, in respect of the Constitutional Rights to Education and Health. It has also represented an opportunity to regenerate the italian school.