scholarly journals Digital Disruption in the COVID-19 Era: The Impact on Learning and Students’ Ability to Cope with Study in an Unknown World

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Trixie James ◽  
Gabiela Toth ◽  
Melissa Tomlins ◽  
Brijesh Kumur ◽  
Kerry Bond

The COVID-19 pandemic will forever be known as a disruptive dilemma that impacted many industries in Australia.  For the university sector, sudden lockdown and social distancing rules resulted in an acceleration in the provision of learning and teaching via online platforms, creating new challenges for students and educators. This project explored the ways in which an enabling course supported students through the forced transition from face-to-face classes to online learning due to the COVID-19 restrictions, and the students’ ability to adjust to the disruption caused by the pandemic. This unexpected change provided the opportunity to explore how enabling students perceived this experience and the effect it had on their ability to complete their units of study.  This paper presents findings on the impact that the abrupt transition to online learning had on the students’ educational experience and on their psychological and emotional wellbeing. It was found that most students experienced increased stress due to the changes in household dynamics, responsibilities and a different learning context, yet many reported improved study and technological skills, as well as an improved awareness of their ability to cope with change.  

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 102 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matt Elphick

Digital capabilities are recognized as key skills that students must possess to learn and work in our increasingly digital world and have been the subject of a growing focus over recent years. Similarly, smartphones and, to a lesser degree, tablets are now ubiquitous within the student body, and many academics are beginning to leverage these devices for the purposes of learning and teaching in higher education. To further explore the possibilities of mobile technology, the iPilot project was created to explore the effects that embedded iPad use had on undergraduate students’ creativity, ability to collaborate with their peers and their perception of their digital capabilities. Focusing on the digital capabilities aspect of the project, this paper explores the results gathered. While the results are mixed, when combined with data taken from the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) Digital Experience Tracker, it does appear that using iPads in the university classroom can have a positive impact on certain digital behaviors and students’ perceptions of their digital skills.


2021 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zakaryia Almahasees ◽  
Khaled Mohsen ◽  
Mohammad Omar Amin

COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted teaching in a vriety of institutions. It has tested the readiness of academic institutions to deal with such abrupt crisis. Online learning has become the main method of instruction during the pandemic in Jordan. After 4 months of online education, two online surveys were distributed to investigate faculty’s and Students’ perception of the learning process that took place over that period of time with no face to face education. In this regard, the study aimed to identify both faculty’s and students’ perceptions of online learning, utilizing two surveys one distributed to 50 faculty members and another 280 students were selected randomly to explore the effectiveness, challenges, and advantages of online education in Jordan. The analysis showed that the common online platforms in Jordan were Zoom, Microsoft Teams offering online interactive classes, and WhatsApp in communication with students outside the class. The study found that both faculty and students agreed that online education is useful during the current pandemic. At the same time, its efficacy is less effective than face-to-face learning and teaching. Faculty and students indicated that online learning challenges lie in adapting to online education, especially for deaf and hard of hearing students, lack of interaction and motivation, technical and Internet issues, data privacy, and security. They also agreed on the advantages of online learning. The benefits were mainly self-learning, low costs, convenience, and flexibility. Even though online learning works as a temporary alternative due to COVID-19, it could not substitute face-to-face learning. The study recommends that blended learning would help in providing a rigorous learning environment.


2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 50-64
Author(s):  
Bahram Sattar Abdulrahman

The present study aims at investigating the use of prosodic features by Kurdish EFL undergraduates in their face-to-face interactions inside/outside the classroom from the university instructors’ perspectives. The study hypothesizes that the majority of Kurdish EFL undergraduates are not fully aware of the fact that any misuse of prosodic features would probably affect the emotions, feelings, and attitudes that the face-to-face interaction is intended to convey. Building on an analysis of a questionnaire given to 54 university instructors at 10 Iraqi Kurdistan Region different universities, the study concludes that the majority of problems the students face can be related to the misuse of stress, intonation, and other prosodic features. Therefore, EFL instructors should pay more attention to make students learn how to use prosodic features and enable them to send messages adequately while engaging in face-to-face interactions. This would require special classes about prosodic features so that EFL students can overcome the misuse they have in face-to-face communication. This is inevitable because accuracy and fluency in communication require EFL students to master both features: segmental and suprasegmental. The reason behind this necessity could be attributed to the fact that broken and/or incorrect pronunciation can be considered as one of the most prominent factors behind misunderstandings in communication.


Author(s):  
Chrissi Nerantzi ◽  
Craig Scott Despard

In this paper we describe the use of LEGO® models within assessment of the Postgraduate Certificate in Academic Practice (PGCAP) offered at the University of Salford. Within the context of the PGCAP, we model innovative and contextualised assessment strategies for and of learning. We challenge our students, who are teachers in higher education (HE), to think and rethink the assessment they are using with their own students. We help them develop a deeper understanding and experience of good assessment and feedback practice in a wider context while they are assessed as students on the PGCAP. We report on an evaluation of how the LEGO® model activity was used with a cohort of students in the context of the professional discussion assessment. We share the impact it had on reflection and the assessment experience and make recommendations for good practice.


2018 ◽  
pp. 567-585
Author(s):  
Laurette S. M. Bristol ◽  
Merilyn Childs

The study that formed the basis of this chapter aimed to understand the practices mediating the quality of an online learning program from the perspective of educators in transition from face-to-face to online learning and teaching. A narrative community of enquiry was established for the period of the study, and seven academics from a single institution volunteered to participate in a six-month conversation about the sites for practice, challenges and curriculum decisions made while teaching online. A “practice architectures” perspective was adopted. The study found that “designing and redesigning” was not limited as supposed to a single transformation from face-to-face teaching to an online learning space. Rather, it was an ongoing professional practice, regardless of how novice or experienced and “tech savvy” the academic. The digital space is rapidly evolving, as are the professional learning demands of teacher educators. “Ambitious teacher practices” are permanently required.


2010 ◽  
pp. 84-102
Author(s):  
P. Toyoko Kang

This chapter provides an argument endorsing blendedlearning and teaching for foreign language (FL)/second language (L2) courses, in lieu of total online learning andteaching or total face-to-face learning and teaching (FFLT). Two main arguments are posed, citing concrete examples. First, that in total online learning and teaching, one of the greatest challenges is to reduce the psychological and social distance between teacher and student that leads to a dysfunctional parser (a mental language processor) for FL/L2. And secondly, online learning and teachingencourage more input, hence clarify communication---by making not only currently incomprehensible input comprehensible but also hard-tobe-comprehended output easy-to-comprehend---- through “self-negotiation of form and meaning,” and the parser’s strategy of being “first (prosodic phrase) come, first interpreted/processed.” This chapter proceeds to strongly recommend that FL/L2 teachers make simple audio files to provide their students with spoken input to prevent students from employing the L1 strategy of “first come, last interpreted/ processed.” Furthermore, this chapter shows what kind of spoken input is to be recorded in audio files for students in Elementary Japanese II and Intermediate Japanese I.


Author(s):  
Vive Kumar ◽  
Maiga Chang ◽  
Tracey L. Leacock

Writing is a core skill that learners are expected to develop in their early school years and use effectively throughout their later school years. Historically, writing has been considered the purview of grade school education, yet there is evidence that learners seem to lack basic writing skills even at the university level. Unfortunately, the challenges posed by the volume of data created when students write have hampered writing researchers’ attempts to study the impacts of grade school writing initiatives in depth. This chapter introduces two novel approaches to academic writing activities that hold the potential to enhance writing competence and make it easier for researchers to understand the impact of writing interventions. The first uses mobile devices in a situated learning context, and the second uses a mixed-initiative writing system in the classroom.


Author(s):  
Dionisia Tzavara ◽  
Dimitrios Koufopoulos

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, universities worldwide were forced to close their campuses and move instructional delivery to a digital mode. Many argued that this massive emergency digitalisation of instructional delivery was a major move of higher education toward online learning. However, this view overlooks considerations of pedagogy and of online learning design and delivery. Online learning is not just about uploading content to an online space or about moving all lectures online, and there is a whole theory behind designing online learning environments and delivering online learning. This chapter will discuss key theoretical considerations behind online learning design and delivery in relation to the digitalisation of higher education during COVID-19 with a view to make recommendations that will help universities design fulfilling and effective online learning and teaching experiences for their students and faculty.


2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 102 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julie C. Vuolo

Background: Incivility is the display of intimidating, rude, disruptive or undesirable behaviours. Incivility in nursing has the potential to impact on the learning environment, student wellbeing and patient outcomes. Although it is a globally recognised phenomenon, relatively little is known about it in the context of nurse education in the United Kingdom, where the students’ time is divided equally between theory and practice and a nurse mentor is allocated to each student when on clinical placement.Methods: A phenomenological qualitative design was used to explore the experiences of ten student nurses studying on a three year degree level pre-registration (pre-licensure) nursing programme. Data was collected by in-depth, semi-structured, face-to-face interviews which were tape-recorded and transcribed verbatim. Thematic analysis was conducted using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis as a framework.Results: Student nurses can experience incivility in both classroom and clinical settings with negative consequences in terms of learning and personal wellbeing. Four superordinate (main) themes (Knowing-Not Knowing/Positioning/The Invisible Student/Distraction) were identified along with a further fifteen subordinate themes which included misuse, being nameless and feeling a burden.Conclusions: These findings add further to our understanding of incivility in nursing education and specifically the potential for incivility to impact on learning and students’ emotional wellbeing. Incivilities related to ‘the Invisible Student’ and ‘Knowing-Not Knowing’ are particularly worthy of further exploration as they reveal a hitherto unappreciated dimension of this complex, globally recognised phenomena. 


2011 ◽  
pp. 1334-1338
Author(s):  
Carl A. Raschke

While critics of the new computer-mediated learning styles utter jeremiads about the impending apocalypse of higher education in general, technophiles argue that the changes are all salutary. In fact, some see no difference between faculty cultures and online and traditional schools (Johnstone, 2001). In the same vein, the proliferation of digital classrooms across the instructional spectrum and online learning have touched off a firestorm of controversy concerning the “effectiveness” of new computer-mediated pedagogies versus traditional face-to-face, or “presential,” instruction. Various studies have been conducted and the findings circulated (Smith, Smith, & Boone, 2000).


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