From traditional to home-confined learning: a case study in a school involved with ICT

The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic affected all aspects of daily life overnight, worldwide. In education, academic systems had to frantically switch to an online format. Teachers and students had to face an unknown situation, with difficulties as isolation, technology management and pedagogical approaches. However, this impact can be drastically reduced for schools with strong previous background in information and communication technologies (ICT). We reached this conclusion by objectively quantifying the learning results in a sudden transition from face-to-face (F2F) to distant learning (DL). We focus on the abrupt home confinement experienced by the Maristak Durango school during the COVID-19 outbreak. As revealed by the statistical analysis related to the grades of the 360+ students (VET, High School) who went through this F2F to DL transition (F2F2DL), almost all students were able to retain and improve their grades. The results prove how a good ICT-based background can tangibly alleviate any radical F2F2DL shift brought by an unforeseen chain of events. This paper contributes to this type of analysis for VET, since there are hardly any studies related to this scenario. © 2022 IEEE.

Online Digital Workshop: An Opportunity for Digital Learning in Kenya

Institutions wishing to introduce e-learning into their educational system need to consider the necessary resources and evaluate the levels of technological literacy of their teaching staff. The teachers’ preparation in the field of digital skills is essential to help students to profit their learning period. This requires previous training to allow teachers to achieve an appropriate level in terms of digital competence. This need is especially emphasized in a developing country like Kenya, where digital training for qualified teachers is still emerging. In this paper, we present the work done in a rural area of Homa Bay County (Kenya) and how that face-to-face work has needed to turn into e-learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, we describe the transition from temporary informal remote work to a formal approach, which will use a platform as a training, improvement, and reference plan to ensure the level of digital competence needed by the Kenyan teachers. The proposed solution is based on the Common Digital Competence Framework for Teachers, a Spanish adaptation an of the European frameworks DigComp and DigCompEdu, which allow establishing the criteria to identify digital competence needs and how to prepare digital activities for teachers. © 2022, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.