Environment Challenges of E-Learning in Higher Education—The Teachers’ Perspective

The COVID-19 pandemic enforced higher education institutions worldwide to start using various digital technologies for providing synchronous digital online teaching and learning support. The new e-learning environment became a main challenge for the teachers, students, and university management. This paper is based on a study that aims to investigate the main challenges of digital teaching (a teacher-centered aspect of e-learning) from the teachers’ perspective. The data for this research is gathered through the ENLIVEN Video Podcasts, using the method of semi-structured interviews, in different locations of the Paris Lodron University of Salzburg. Qualitative analysis was used for data analysis. The results of this study provide five common themes which reflect teachers’ challenges: personal barriers to digital teaching, structural barriers to digital teaching, challenging factors to ensure the quality of teaching, recommendations for colleagues, and future vision. Furthermore, this paper presents a collective story of teachers’ experiences related to digital teaching practices and gives an overview of the major challenges when teaching via an e-learning environment. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

Developing Data Literacy Competences at University: the experience of the DEDALUS project

Nowadays, data are everywhere becoming more and more important in everyday life. Recently, during the COVID-19 outbreak, data are being used on a massive scale, and having the skills to understand the information conveyed through numbers, percentages and trends curves became essential. From this perspective, data literacy is a competence not only important for those operating in computer science or technological sectors, but it is acquiring a key role in other sectors such as social science, humanities, and journalism. In this paper, we present the DEDALUS project, an EU-funded project aimed at developing data literacy courses for university students. DEDALUS defined a competence framework that identifies a set of competences related to data literacy, to which modular university courses in different disciplines are based upon. The outcomes of the project were piloted in 5 European countries in order to define the implementation strategies that identifies different models of data literacy inclusion in the higher education domain.

E-learning in the times of COVID-19: The main challenges in Higher Education

This paper examines the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic on teaching and learning in higher education. Descriptive statistics were applied to data collected by a questionnaire from 1146 teachers and students from Estonia, Italy, and Serbia. In this research, we investigated the impact of COVID-19 on teaching and learning methods and the main challenges in digital teaching and learning. The empirical results showed that most higher education institutions implemented different digital platforms and switched entirely to online or blended learning. In addition, a sense of belonging through distance learning and delivery of 'practical' lectures were found to be the key issues for the successful implementation of teaching and learning during the pandemic. Proper training of teachers, utilization of engagement tools, and investments in virtual laboratories could be a solution to the successful implementation of digital education. © 2021 IEEE.