ABSTRACT
During the pandemic outbreak of COVID-19 in Greece that coincided with the spring semester of the year 2020, conventional face-to-face lessons presented a threat to public health. As a result, house confinement measures were taken. Universities, due to their offering either directly or via their lifelong education centers, were partially prepared to offer distant learning solutions for their students during the pandemic. The lessons, in the general case, were delivered in an ad hoc manner utilizing teachers' personal experiences and preferences creating some pressure on existing infrastructures. In the case of the Department of Industrial Design & Production Engineering at the University of West Attica, things were more organized than in the general case: there was a, more or less, uniform practice of preferring synchronous lessons and some monitoring was planned in order to evaluate the application for future reference. While data collected in the process are still going through statistical analysis there are some preliminary results that can be reported here.
ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic has forced educational institutions globally to resort to the online mode of teaching and learning. In this paper, we examined how the emergency online education was carried out in the Assam state of India. An explanatory mixed methods study methodology was adopted. Perspectives of 92 students and 30 teachers from 30 secondary level institutions of Assam were examined. Students' acceptability of the emergency online education as well as the effects on the mental and physical health of the students were studied. Moreover, the teachers' perspectives on the emerging online threats were also examined. Data were collected using two separate questionnaires administered to the students and the teachers. It was followed with telephonic interviews with the teachers to gain in-depth knowledge on the studied issues. This study examines both the positive and negative effects of the adoption of online education. The results indicated that all the students could not avail the benefits of this mode. Social messaging apps and online tools like WhatsApp, schools' own mobile apps, Google Classroom LMS and Google Meet, ZOOM, recorded videos and audio tutorials were used to provide online support to the students. Impact on the physical and mental health of the students was observed. The online teaching process led to the generation of a large repository of e-resources. The results also indicated the ignorance of teachers regarding the online threats which could severely affect their students. The study recommended awareness programmes and training sessions for teachers and students on educational technology tools, technologies and approaches for the post-COVID-19 period. © 2022, Kazan Federal University. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
The purpose of this work is to assess the impact that COVID-19 has had on the quality of the training process in the FCA of the UG. To achieve this, a small-scale study was carried out from a qualitative approach. The determination of the instruments and indicators was made based on those used in the reports "Global Survey of the International Association of Universities on the impact of COVID-19 on Higher Education in the world" and "Survey of the Higher Education Section of the Program for Twinning and Interconnection of Universities to COVID-19";those that were analyzed and appropriate, in a pertinent way, to the objectives of this study. In the same way, the instruments of these surveys were taken as references, which were also conveniently adequate in correspondence with the interests of this work, after socialization with experts from the University of Guayaquil. In general, the results confirm the commitment and responsibility of the FCA of the UG, towards its students and the will to give continuity to its substantive processes and the need for the educational institution to create the conditions to reduce the digital divide among its students.
ABSTRACT
Engineering design and communication courses are typically dynamic, active learning spaces that bring together a complex array of knowledge and skills. Their ambiguous nature has allowed, often contentiously, subjects such as language and communication, the arts, the humanities, and the social sciences to enter the discourse of engineering in a newly meaningful way. This article considers this development in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and, in particular, how the creativity and imagination required to succeed in engineering design might be cultivated in emergency distance learning. I consider a plethora of sources for guidance, with a special interest in how language and communication facilitates collaborative learning, creativity, and intersubjectivity and how that mediation is further mediated by educational technology in distance learning. I focus on the challenges faced and the resulting importance of training for both instructors and students. Finally, I argue that, despite our difficult circumstances, we should aim to encourage our students to exercise their imaginations, both independently and collaboratively, through our selection, framing, and facilitation of team design projects during the pandemic.