Use of ICT Tools in Higher Education in Peru during the COVID-19 Pandemic

This paper analyzes the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the consequent migration to digital learning environments on the habits of use of digital teaching tools among university professors in Peru. The existence of gender gaps in this impact has also been studied. For this purpose, quantitative analysis of the answers of 116 professors from different Peruvian universities to a questionnaire designed for this purpose was carried out. As a result, it has been obtained that the pandemic has led to an increase in the use of digital tools in all areas of teaching activity studied, mainly in the evaluation and sharing of teaching materials. In addition, although female professors reported a lower use of digital tools before the pandemic, the increase in their use has been greater than in males in all teaching areas. © 2022 IEEE.

The Digitalization of Teaching Practices in K-12 Education: Insights from Teachers’ Perspective

The reopening of schools and the returning to normal after the emergency experience of online teaching brought to the line new realities in educational practice for both teachers and students. It is now crucial to reflect on the consequences of this experience and rethink the prospects of using digital tools and online learning. The previous remote learning experience could be conceived as an opportunity for the educational community to take advantage of the benefits online teaching offers and adopt those practices that could further develop the teaching experience. This paper examines the reality in K-12 schools after the pandemic investigating the incorporation of seven digital teaching strategies into teachers’ daily routines. The study adopts a mixed methodology approach analysing quantitative data from an online survey of 392 in-service teachers and qualitative data from two focus groups. The results show that an essential percentage of teachers continue to use some practices of the distance learning model to enhance learning and communication in the classroom. The use of these strategies was directly and indirectly affected by teachers’ attitudes towards the distance learning model and their perceptions of the challenges faced during the pandemic. Implications for policy and practice are drawn. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Intelligent Visual Interface for Assisted Digital Teaching Using Computer Vision

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the world severely. With the onset of lockdowns and restrictions, daily activities have been hindered, forcing humanity to adapt to this new reality. With new arising necessities, several advancements have been made to help bridge the gap in our old way of life and our new, albeit forced reality. Education has been revolutionized out of necessity as well. Schools and universities have shifted to online mode in order to continue educating the future generations. But this has had its limitations. The goal of our research is to enable educators to seamlessly communicate and learn like they would on through regular blackboard. We have actuated with the use of computer vision and camera to capture their ideas onto the computer screen. Our approach involves a virtual keyboard that can be interfaced with hand gesture for providing input onto the system at a desired text area. Also, a virtual drawing system is developed that can capture finger movement and accurately draw, thereby envisioning free hands teaching gestures onto the screen. © 2022 IEEE.

An Experience Report on Transitioning to Blended Learning and Portfolio-assessment: a Cross-campus Course in Programming

The transition from traditional to digital teaching has led to several challenges for students and educators under the COVID-19 pandemic. Most universities are experiencing remote online delivery and assessment for the first time, which creates several issues, particularly for delivering courses efficiently and evaluating the outcomes without students compromising academic integrity. In this study, we take a closer look at a cross-campus case in delivering a programming course that switched to digital teaching due to COVID-19. We focus on the transition in assessment forms and the gradual adaptation to portfolio evaluation over two years. This form of assessment is more aligned with the constructive alignment theory, and hence contribute to increased learning outcomes as the students receive feedback along the way. Furthermore, we introduced a task where students had to reflect on the answers and solutions. This reflection note may help the teacher to better understand to which level the student has actually understood the theories and skills applied in the solution, and hence reassure that the solution is produced by the student. Observations from our data provide promising direction that it can increase learning benefits and reduce possibilities or the need for cheating and contributes to increased learning outcomes. However, this form of assessment requires a significant effort from teachers and is both time and resource consuming. © 2022 IEEE.

Training and Educational Innovation: An Evaluative Perspective of the Digital Teaching Competence

This article analyzes the assessment of the four development levels of the Digital Teaching Competence (DTC) to recognize the needs and formulation of challenges in training and educational innovation required in the pedagogical practices of university professors under the current context of the Covid-19 pandemic. The study used an empirical-analytical methodology with a nonexperimental, transactional, descriptive design. The sample design was probabilistic, estimated with 95% confidence and 5% error among 252 teachers from various faculties of the University of La Guajira (Colombia). The selected instrument corresponded to the rubric's application to evaluate the university professor's digital teaching competence in Latin America. Among the study's significant results, we highlight that the rubric presented a high Cronbach's alpha reliability (α: 0.947). In the general assessment of DTC development, it was estimated that 78.2% of teachers are in the first two levels of DTC development assessment (Beginning and Middle). The evaluation rubric allows identifying challenges and opportunities that teacher training must address to advance the professional development of professors. © 2022, International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning. All Rights Reserved.

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.

Scholarship of Teaching and Learning-A way to identify inclusion opportunities and exclusion risks in digital learning scenarios

Technical aspects are brought into focus thinking of inclusion opportunities and exclusion risks in digital learning scenarios. However, focussing on technical limitations is not sufficient. This contribution describes another important field of inclusion, namely psychological personality traits. In a longitudinal study at the Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg (H-BRS), University of Applied Sciences, we accompanied a civil law lecture of a bachelor's degree programme, which had been digitalized because of COVID-19, with empirical Scholarship of Teaching and Learning methods for two semesters. N=55 students from the first measured semester and N=35 from the second one rated different digital teaching methods used in the developed digital learning scenario. Their personality traits according to the five-factor model were measured by using a validated psychometric short-scale (BFI-10). Moderate to large empirical effects of the students' personality traits on the assessments of different digital teaching methods, used in the digital learning scenario, could be observed. Neuroticism values influences the perceptions of the course difficulty and the preference for using an instant messenger as a central communication platform, where students can interact with fellows and lecturers in a way the students are used to in their daily life. High conscientiousness predicts a more regular execution of the weekly tasks given throughout the semester, while higher values in extraversion are associated with a preference for synchronous video conference sessions and active webcams. Higher agreeableness is associated with rating the learning atmosphere as more constructive while low values are associated with perceiving more negative consequences due to the reduced contact to fellows based on COVID-19 restrictions. Correlations between the dimension openness and any ratings of digital teaching methods could not be observed. With this insight into our students' personality traits, we were able to match the digital teaching methods used in our digital learning scenario to the psychological needs of our students, which resulted in a higher inclusion level and a reduction of exclusion risks. © 2021 IEEE.

Changes, Longings, and Potentials for Future Pedagogical Practices: Investigating University Teachers’ Experiences During the Spring 2020 Lockdown

This paper takes a quantitative ethnographic approach to understand how the lockdown in the spring of 2020 affected the teachers’ work situation at a large university in Denmark. Based on free-text responses from survey data, we create epistemic networks to explore how teachers articulate changes, longings, and potentials for their own future digital teaching practices based on their experiences of the first lockdown. The findings illustrate that interaction and human contact, which play a pivotal role in teachers’ didactical skillsets and efforts to create good learning environments, were missing during the lockdown. The study also highlights that teachers’ perceptions of the inability of digital, technological solutions appear to relate to on-campus teaching ideals. As such, this paper argues that future crisis-handling, as well as developments and refinements of digital teaching formats, at the university, should be attentive to support and foster better areas of contact and interaction between students and teachers. © 2022, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Can zoom replace the classroom? Perceptions on digital learning in higher education within it

The Covid‐19 pandemic has forced institutions of higher education to create digital learning environments replacing physical classrooms. The transition to digital teaching has been both abrupt and challenging for many lecturers and students. While communication and interaction between lecturer and student or among students are possible digitally, there is a difference between sitting physically next to your fellow students versus staring into a “black screen”. This paper investigates experiences of online learning among students in higher education during lockdown. We conducted an online survey (n=200) among students in Norway studying for a bachelor’s degree in information technology (IT). We emphasize students’ experience of the digital learning environment through questions on attendance and participation in live lectures, use of recorded videos, use of chat and camera and their motivation for digital learning. The findings show that students to a large or very large extent (85%) follow live lectures, at the same time they also prefer that there are video recordings of the lectures. Furthermore, we see that the students are highly or very highly (65%) motivated for digital live lectures. Concerning student engagement, such as asking questions to the lecturer and answering questions from the lecturer in the Zoom‐chat, we see that the answers vary greatly. They are distributed almost equally on the whole scale from a very small degree to a very high degree. Among our relevant contributions, we have learned that recording lectures is overwhelmingly considered positive among students and should be practiced when possible. Students rarely if ever turn on their cameras during lectures and do not expect others to show their faces. In general, among our respondents Zoom online lectures seem to work well, despite limitations to interaction and participation. © the authors, 2021. All Rights Reserved.