According to the OECD ‘s (2020) report on the impact of COVID 19 on education “This crisis has exposed the many inadequacies and inequities in our education systems – from access to the broadband and computers needed for online education, and the supportive environments needed to focus on learning, up to the misalignment between resources and needs.”. Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) were no exception to the situation. Thousands of academics around the world were forced to turn their lectures and face-to-face classes to online courses for millions of students, within a few days’ notice. Both sides were not prepared for this, which was quite normal as according to CEDEFOP (2020) only 8% of EU population has attended an online class during 2019, thus it was doomed not to work, as it was expected to. The most common case is that each university chose an existing teleconference platform like Zoom, Webex, Skype for business, Microsoft teams etc., and offered the same lectures as online courses, which as anyone can understand did not have the expected outcomes. Both students and lecturers got tired, even bored, during classes, absenteeism was very high amongst students, technical difficulties occurred all time, socializing and cooperation -crucial aspects of student learning- were almost non-existent and of course, the quality of the class was much lower than the expected one. The Covid-19 crisis has shown that once we lose or even diminish social contact, it is very easy to fail in digital inclusion. On the other hand, this situation revealed all the positive aspects of eLearning, such as flexibility on schedule, lower cost, the possibility of lectures being recorded and giving people repetitive access, inclusiveness as everyone can participate without having to move from rural or secluded areas, especially when they do not have the chance to do so. The latter has been even more relevant and prominent due to the restrictions that have taken place in order to avoid spreading COVID 19. So the question is, how someone may rip the benefits of distance learning without having to suffer the consequences and struggle to “survive” day by day in the online classroom. The project iSurvive supports that the answer is to prepare academics to be able to develop online content that will actually achieve the expected learning outcomes by keeping students interested and involved. To achieve its purpose the iSurvive: Digital Roadmap for designing online interactive content, project aims to develop the competencies of HE lecturers academics in order to be prepared to transform their lectures and in class activities to online ones that keep their students motivated, and foster their own well-being as they won’t feel like teaching an empty screen. In order to accomplish the above, the iSurvice project foresees four Intellectual Outputs (IOs): 1-Comparative Study- that will identify the current needs and gaps for boosting the effectiveness of online HE learning 2-Guide of Key Pedagogical Principles for effective Online Teaching and Learning- will be a combined guide introducing educators into a methodologically effective Online class 3-iSurvive compass for Interactive & Gamified online content Creation- is concerned with combining several parameters creating a tailor-made roadmap for the educator needs 4-An innovative MOOC-that provides a high education course of specialization in an area where skills needs are so rapidly developing. That will act as a complete system for training the primary target group of the project, HE lecturers and academics, in order to also benefit the secondary target group, HE students. The project envisages the below long term impact: 1) Improved competencies of Higher Education 2) Increased online course delivery in Europe 3) Improved quality of online learning (synchronous and asynchronous) 4) Enhancement of the eLearning courses positive aspects 5) Conversion of eLearning from necessity and “needs to be” into motivating and exciting 6) Provision of access to high quality learning to all including people living in rural and secluded areas To guarantee the scientific value of the project’s results, the partnership comprises Organisations that have both the experience and the know-how to successfully develop the project results as following: 1) Warsaw University of Life Sciences, Poland 2) DIMITRA Education and Consulting, Greece 3) Centre for Research and European Studies, Italy 4) International Telematics’ University, Italy 5) ITPIO, Bulgaria 6) the University of National and World Economy, Bulgaria 7) Folkuniversitetet, Sweden Its expertise assures that the impact of the project is high for educational institutions, educators, students including those that will participate in the project as well as those that will use the results after the completion of the project either as standalone results or as installation of the complete system.
The idea behind the project was to help teachers and academics transfer traditionally conducted classes to online classes. It was originally related to the Covid-19 pandemic, but such tools are also needed in other circumstances, especially in a world where many elements of life and work are moving online. Our package is designed to help comprehensively when a teacher has to quickly prepare his classes as e-learning on his own. Academics and other teachers usually have their materials related to their subject taught, but they are not used to organizing the lecture in such a way as in distance learning. On the other hand, keeping the attention of online listeners requires other means than face-to-face classes, include engaging and attention-grabbing elements. The results of the project are to facilitate the selection of tools for diverse educational needs and various forms of classes, such as laboratories, lectures, tests, case studies, educational games, etc. This set is a tutorial that would save time wasted searching for tools that will ultimately be used on your own and can turn out not to be the best fit. In addition, a guide in the form of a book would allow teachers to find the necessary substantive foundations.
The idea for the project arose from the problems with the transition to online teaching during the pandemic. Teachers and academics, especially those who have never dealt with e-learning, found themselves in a very difficult situation, because overnight they had to transfer their classes from face-to-face meetings to online, without losing any of their attractiveness. The research and own experience shows that, unfortunately, teachers felt lost, frustrated, did not know what tools they could use, and the short training provided by some universities turned out to be insufficient. Most often, online lectures were assessed by students as boring, inattractive and uninteresting. The lack of direct contact can be overcome by using simple tools that can be applied to the classes and transferred to the e-learning platform, but teachers need to know that they exist and in which area and in which case can be used. Gamification elements, interactive elements, etc. are particularly important to stimulate student involvement. Teachers did not have time to try out and adapt various tools to their needs, they did not meet their expectations. The purpose of the project was to create the guide, compass and MOOC that would be helpful in e-learning.