Empowering preschool teachers and parents for digital education: Influence of the pandemic on children and preschools

In addition to its impact on daily and work lives, the COVID-19 pandemic has significantly affected education delivery. According to UNESCO, nearly 90% of the world's student population has had their learning experiences disrupted by precautions and policies implemented to overcome the spread of the disease. The project 'Home, but not alone: Home, but not alone: Empowering preschool teachers and parents for digital education', a European funded project focused on the exchange of good practices to improve preschool education throughout Europe, will mitigate educational losses by supporting teachers and parents who are the main providers of education for young children. This work describes the actions made to analyse the influence of the pandemic on children and preschools. © 2022 IEEE.

Planning, Communication and Active Methodologies: Online Assessment of the Software Engineering Subject during the COVID-19 Crisis

The coronavirus pandemic has had a high impact worldwide. The health crisis has not only had an impact on people's own health and on health systems, but has also affected other areas. In the educational context, the lockdown measures implemented by different governments have challenged the learning ecosystem. In the case of higher education in Spain, with a strong attendance factor in most public universities, face-to-face classes were interrupted after a month in the second term, ending the academic year in the online mode. This change has meant a great effort on the teachers' side to transform the face-to-face teaching into the online approach, which in many cases has meant quite a comprehensive new design of the subject, changing the evaluation process and the methodologies used. This work presents a success case of online assessment developed in the Software Engineering I subject of the Degree in Computer Engineering at the University of Salamanca. The objective is to show how the previous use of active methodologies and the integration of educational technologies in classroom-based teaching facilitates the transformation of assessment to an online or blended approach while maintaining a high degree of student involvement and satisfaction. After presenting a comparison between the face-to-face approach and the adaptation to the online approach, an analysis is made of the learning results and student satisfaction concerning previous academic years. The results show that the change of approach has not reduced the satisfaction results obtained in previous courses. In terms of learning outcomes, there is an overall increase in the grades obtained by students in all assessment items.