Intellectual Outputs

Output Identification

O2

Output Title

Digital Education appraisal and quality perception by students, teachers and trainers at the partner HEIs during the COVID-19 crisis

Organisation

University of Barcelona

Output Description

The goal of this IO is to get insights about the students’ and teachers/trainers’ attitudes towards DE, in particular towards OERs, mainly during the COVID-19 crisis and in contrast with their pre-pandemic experiences. Among other aspects we intend to investigate: which expectations teachers/trainers and students had, but also which problems they encountered when working with digital materials and teaching tools during the COVID-19 crisis. Of particular interest is how teachers/trainers and students adjusted to new circumstances, especially if they had no experience in using and adapting OERs to their needs and capacities.
Within this IO, a comprehensive survey will be conducted in all languages of the partners for collecting data from the respondents. The survey will be developed from existing instruments which have been identified in the research literature and expanded in order to cover issues directly connected to COVID-19 crisis. Results will be collected and analysed, and openly available. A report describing the results will be created.
Furthermore, a qualitative research methodology will be developed. This will include data collection and Skype/Zoom semi-structured interviews with teachers/trainers using digital resources for teaching/learning purposes. The questions will aim to elicit information about the reasons teachers to use or reject to use various tools that DE software is offering.
Another qualitative method will be used with Summer School students as participants in this research: focus groups which enable to engage students in discussions based on preprepared questions regarding their motivation, pros and contras in DE. The focus groups sessions will be recorded and the relevant conclusions will be drawn on the basis of the transcribed protocols.
Target groups for this IO are (L)IS students and teachers/trainers at partner institutions.
The results could give an impression about (L)IS students’ and teachers’ attitudes towards DE and its organization and management during the time of COVID-19 crisis. This task will enable the project team to collect information about barriers and their role in the adoption of DE and OERs in particular during the time of crisis. Improved knowledge about these barriers can contribute to better adoption of DE in the time of crisis. In addition, in the future it can help to facilitate and accelerate the digital transformation of universities as a condition of their sustainability. It could also show possible differences between the practices and reactions to the time of crisis at partner HEIs.
The results with regards to the use/non-use of OERs and the reasons for that can be used for the determination of critical success factors relevant for the evaluation of OERs (see IO 3). The results of the study will be published in form of research papers and presented at national and international conferences.
The results of this study should be, in principle, transferable to other disciplines.

Tasks

Data will be collected from students and teachers/trainers separately. Before data collection begins, the University of Barcelona, which has the lead for this IO, will design a first draft for the questionnaires in English and an interview guide. This questionnaire/interview guideline will be discussed with the other project partners and a final version will be reached. Afterwards, the SRCE will create an online version within a survey tool and conduct a pre-study among the students and teachers which may result in some changes in the design of the questionnaire and interview guide. The pre-study should also provide a guideline about how the data collections should be performed.
Subsequently, all partners will translate the survey and the interview guide into their languages and provide some quality control for the translation.
Then, the partners will use their networks to widely distribute the links to the surveys. During the data collection, all partners will conduct some interviews with selected teachers. The quantitative data will be centrally analysed by the University of Barcelona and SRCE and a report will be created. The qualitative data (open ended items of the form) will be analysed by each partner and a short report in English will be created by each partner. These single reports will be summed up by the SRCE. Finally, a summative report about the results will be composed by the University of Barcelona and will include delegated researcher from each partner.

Start Date

01-07-2021 (dd-mm-yyyy)

End Date

24-02-2022

Report

IO2_DECriS_Report.pdf