The “forced digitalization” of higher education came with many challenges, the key one being to ensure continuity of the teaching and learning process under the unexpected conditions imposed by social interaction restrictions. Innovative pedagogies were mobilized to facilitate instruction in the “new reality”. Despite the fact that universities managed rapidly to adapt practices by using existing digital tools and technological investments, the negative effects of students and scholars being isolated from the idly community, determined now the focus on the necessity to take care of the social, emotional and affective side, as it impacts on the academic performance. Data from a recent study carried on in 24 universities in Romania came to confirm it (ANOSR, 2020). Several studies during the pandemic situation have shown students experience decreased motivation and lack of social context, even a tendency for drop out within vulnerable groups, when higher education suddenly went online in spring 2020. We have reasons to believe that this tendency will increase on the duration of Covid-19 pandemic and after, due to lower engagement of students with the academic environment at various levels, determined both by individual and social factors, and expand the group of vulnerable people to other categories (ZAHEER et al., 2016, Davidson & Wilson, 2017; Bustamente, 2019; Respondek et al., 2020). For these reasons, we will address social and emotional needs of students and ways of approaching these needs by academics and educational specialists working in support services (Durlak et al., 2011), so that they can attend not just the cognitive development of students, but also their emotional and social needs (Bradley et al., 2010; Davidson et al., 2011; Gerson & Fernandez, 2013) in online learning communities (Peacock & Cowan, 2019). This projects aims at addressing two special sides of this pedagogical innovation not yet consistently addressed: (1) equity for vulnerable groups and (2) ensuring social-emotional conditions of learning in HE, as successful learning is not just about the quality of knowledge and skills to be trained, but is very much related to quality of social interactions among key stakeholders in the process, as well as to the emotional engagement with learning experiences. We can observe high level of concern and effort on using technology and digital tools to enhance teaching and learning and we consider equally important to address educational support services under the new digital conditions. The project aims at: - IDENTIFYING the best practices that could enhance teaching and learning when using digital tools and create conditions for social and emotional engagement of students in online learning. - PROVIDING a framework for transforming and adapting learning support services, with a special focus on vulnerable groups. - CREATING the tools to develop student’s sense of belonging in the context of virtual learning communities. Our target groups are: - Academics teaching online courses, with a focus on those with reduced digital literacy and limited capacity to transfer all teaching in online environment in an effective way. Participants to the project are members of the partner universities (AMU, NKUA, UB, AUM, UniRoma1, SU and EKTU). - Students learning online, who need to develop a sense of belonging, with a focus on those from vulnerable groups. Participants to the project are studying at the partner universities. When taking a perspective view of the needs this project comes to respond to, there are several areas of investigation and exploration, which were undertaken by the partners in this project, according to their expertise in the field. Each of these topics were translated into actions (working packs) that would lead to accomplishment of the general objectives of the project. Collaborative groups of academics will co-create knowledge, support mechanisms and services to be offered across all universities, such as analytical selection of the vulnerabilities in the education system, with a specific attention for the emotional and social impact of the pandemic and the identification of new categories of vulnerable people, a mapping of existing digital media used by partner universities for teaching and learning and evaluate their effect on sense of belonging, design thinking as a method to add knowledge about possibilities to enhance the sense of belonging among different categories of students in order to assist course design, support services and creation of digital tools. All intellectual outputs and other tangible materials will be open access resources to be used, adapted and improved by partner universities and other organizations that seek to offer high quality online teaching practice and ensure social-emotional conditions of learning for their students at the same time.
The project objectives were formulated, as to address the specified needs: I. IDENTIFYING the best practices that could enhance teaching and learning when using digital tools and create conditions for social and emotional engagement of students in online learning – (identified within each partner university) II. PROVIDING a framework for transforming and adapting learning support services, with a special focus on vulnerable groups (as a result of learning activities) III. CREATING the tools to develop student’s sense of belonging in the context of virtual learning communities (as a result of piloting). This project was very practical in its approach, as it built not only on strong research and documented proposals, but also on shared learning activities and piloted methodologies. The general purpose was sharing knowledge and expertise among partners, co-creating means to approach and adapt to particular educational settings and circumstances. We started from the premise that the whole partnership could benefit from the resources that each university has at its disposal to find solutions to this particular situation of online learning. We were aware of the fact that there would be differences in the context and the approach each partner would have, but only by working together could we provide support to all partners involved and create innovative solutions to the problems we all shared. By implementing the project we managed to offer partners access to solutions each university has found in order to face the challenges of remote learning. These solutions were thoroughly described so that they could be adapted to any particular HE contexts. The focus was not necessarily on teaching solutions, but rather on social and emotional support that partner universities offered to their students and academic staff and also the type of activities that could foster and promote a sense of belonging even if delivered online. These solutions became available to other institutions outside the partnership as they were disseminated at different events and were made available as open resources on the project website. At the same time we were able to map existing support services among partner universities that were adapted during the pandemic period so that they could respond to current needs of students and academics alike. We could provide a set of recommendations related different modalities of support, starting from the examples of good practices we encountered among partner universities. The project period was also a time for innovation in terms of the tools academics could use to develop student’s sense of belonging in the context of virtual learning communities. They ranged from self-evaluation tools and instruments to identify emotional well-being to examples of activities and recommendations of contexts or educational objectives to be reached by using these activities.
The project was initiated during the Pandemic of Covid-19 and intended to explore the effects of remote learning on middle motivations, such as belongingness, which prevented moving toward knowledge and understanding, both of which are related to the consummate goals of higher education(Strayhorn, 2005). We could observe the high level of concern and effort on using technology and digital tools to enhance teaching and learning at that time and we considered equally important to address the issue of educational support services under the new digital conditions, especially in respect to equity for vulnerable groups. Despite the fact that universities managed rapidly to adapt practices by using existing digital tools and technological investments, the negative effects of students and scholars being isolated from the idly community, determined the focus on the necessity to take care of the social, emotional and affective side, as it impacts on the academic performance. The project addressed social and emotional needs of students and ways of approaching these needs by academics and educational specialists working in support services (Durlak et al., 2011), so that they could attend not just the cognitive development of students, but also their emotional and social needs (Bradley et al., 2010; Davidson et al., 2011; Gerson & Fernandez, 2013) in online learning communities (Peacock & Cowan, 2019).