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Lucrări Ştiinţifice – vol. 64(2)/2021, seria Agronomie

181

A VIEW OF ONLINE TEACHING AND LEARNING DURING THE

PANDEMIC

Alina SÎRGHEA1, Carmen-Olguța BREZULEANU1

e-mail: [email protected]

Abstract

The pandemic caused by SARS-CoV-2 impacted the way in which all the activities of our lives were developed, and the

educational system was one of the most affected aspects. The report of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and

Cultural Organization (UNESCO, 2020) warns that the pandemic has caused the most serious disorder recorded in

education systems in all history, and that higher education would be the sector that could experience the highest dropout

rates, as well as a reduction in enrollment of the order of 3.5%, which means a global loss of 7.9 million students. To

alleviate this crisis, it recommends formulating comprehensive plans for the reopening of schools, protecting education

funding and collaborating to moderate negative impacts, increase the resilience of education systems with a view to fair

and sustainable development, rethink education and energize positive change in teaching and learning (UNESCO,

2020). After the declaration of a health emergency, all education levels had to quickly reorganize itself, migrating

teaching and learning processes to virtual environment. Although this is increasingly used, there are still a lot of

elements that prevent it from working successfully in all contexts.

Key words: online education, technology, pandemic, social and pedagogical transformations

1 “Ion Ionescu de la Brad” University of Life Sciences, Iași, Romania

Restrictions experienced lately forced

humanity to adapt to a new way of life that gives

place to the creation of new scenarios in which the

use of new technologies that they are transforming

the physical spaces, which were gradually replaced

by virtual spaces. Digital applications became a

new channel of communication and information

that led to teleworking and tele-education. The use

of tele-working in the educational field, according

to Marti Castro (2003) it is “increasingly broad and

diverse, since that can be used by the teacher as a

pedagogical support or the student for learning

autonomous” (p. 406); However, if in the face-to-

face institutions, educational phenomena related to

school accompaniment or students with learning

problems, in the new context, the following

question arises: What about learning in virtual

classrooms?

The insertion of new information and

communication technologies (ICT) in the

educational field, it impacted on the learning

process of the learner, in the role of the teacher, in

the contents, in the evaluation. The role of the

educational subject faces a period of crisis, because

on the one hand it generates significant learning;

and on the other hand the lack of training in the

disciplines gives chances to wide generational

gaps, such as “the digital illiterate (teacher) must

teach the 21st century technology scholar

(student)” (Chamba, 2019). Still, technological

innovation in the educational system it has been

given gradually and according to the resources that

each educational institution owns; however, the

current pandemic caused by the COVID19

abruptly forced a change in the teaching and

learning process face to face with a virtual scenario

without considering the context of the educational

communities.

Without face-to-face communication and

without possibility to leave home, teachers must

adapt and adapt their practices as providers of

educational services to home delivery. Lack of

physical interactions and absence of a true school

setting are major limits. To alleviate these

limitations, teachers are invited to consider ways to

use effectively existing resources and transform as

designers and facilitators of learning having the

home as a setting, and which evolves in space and

time. While maintaining social interactions with

the students, they have to supervise distant

students, bridge the physical distance and organize

different types of curricular resources.

Telecommunications operators, companies

and private organizations reacted adequately,

offering, on the one hand, the necessary

bandwidth, and on the other, services, programs,

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182

software, platforms, etc., to facilitate online

teaching in the event of a crisis without warning.

Keep in mind that there is a forecast that the

global online education market will reach one

global investment of $ 350 billion in 2025

(Research and Markets, 2019).

In parallel, governments had to act with

reflexes in facilitating programs in some countries

distance education through basic classes that could

then be supplemented by the teachers, also online,

from different centers or from their homes. Thus,

students, from their households, could continue

their studies by minimizing possible curricular

losses. The answers of the different countries, has

been unequal but always oriented, obviously,

towards non-contact methodologies (World Bank,

2020). MATERIAL AND METHOD

This paperwork focuses on theoretical

research, investigating various actions taken in Europe in the direction of online education. Through these case studies we want to draw recommendations as well as an inventory of the impact and effects recorded during distance /

online learning in the pandemic. .

RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

Without any doubt, the universities, had it

and have it more easy to treat this pandemic

situation. In the first place, because many of them

already had digital platforms that they had been

using in some phases of the development of their

teaching, generally face-to-face. And secondly,

because age of students makes teaching / learning

of this type more viable.

The easiest in these cases, to the less

experienced teachers, it has been the live broadcast

of a session identical to the face-to-face time

above, or the recording of that session for later

reception by the students or both situations

combined in auditorium class.

Another teacher, more prepared in this type

of methodological strategies, he tried to take

advantage of the various possibilities of the digital

platforms and social networks themselves to

develop online tasks in a more creative and

efficient way.

It is true that in these times it has happened

that, in the face of the forced abrupt change in the

ways of teaching, learning and evaluating, which

could not continue to be face-to-face, a distance

education put very in question in pre-COVID

times, it had to be implemented urgently, on a

massive scale and with large pedagogical

limitations in times of COVID, and it is intended to

take advantage of hybrid formats, combined or

from blended learning in later times, postCOVID.

In this paperwork we prioritize the concept

of “digital distance education” as encompassing a

model of non-face-to-face education, fully

supported by digital systems. You would be talking

about an education virtual, a teaching, an online

learning, supported by technologies, on the net, on

the Internet, on the web, e-learning, distributed

learning, etc. All these denominations, as emerging

at the time and successors of the original distance

education, tend towards openness, non-dependence

on physical location, to the flexibility of time,

space and rhythm of learning, to active learning, to

interaction (synchronous and asynchronous), etc.,

as substantial elements in any definition of these

concepts (Singh and Thurman, 2019).

It seems that a bigger value is given to the

placement of teacher and student in a material

place and temporary time so that a relational,

collaborative, collective work, etc. can take place.

Probably by those who claim that have not worked

with collaborative groups in digital distance

education. What's more that it can be worked

synchronously, and at any time, it can be done

asynchronously. And the results they seem

unquestionable.

All this without stopping in what is coming,

linked to artificial intelligence and virtual reality.

Advance that will allow, for example, that a group

of students learn together, bringing all the

advantages of classroom to the virtual

environment, even though they are actually

thousands of kilometers from each other. The

teachers may or may not enter that virtual

classroom, observe the behaviors of their students,

intervene to orient, etc. These advances in virtual

reality may be joined in the near future by facial

recognition of the participants in the group. Facial

expressions, such as those seen in face-to-face

settings, can show us the degree of interest, their

state of mind, in different instances of their

participation in the group and thus enable

appropriate reactions on the part of educators.

Also these technologies will be able to

recognize and analyze the voices. Ways of

speaking matter for the better understand what is

being said and how it is said. The possibilities of

offering biometric data while learning will also

come, such as heart rate, body temperature, blood

pressure, brain activity, etc. know how a student

faces stress, the levels of effort required before

certain tasks, etc. (Lush, Cooper and Soto, 2020).

According to the United Nations document

(UN, 2020a) in times of pandemic restrictions, in

the countries developed digital distance education

covered between 80 and 85% of the student

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population, while that, in low-income countries,

the coverage of virtual education systems would

not reach 50%. According UNESCO data (2020a),

half of the total number of students, about 826

million, which remained outside the classroom due

to the COVID-19 pandemic, did not have access to

a home computer and 43% (706 million) did not

have the Internet at home, at a time when digital-

based distance learning was used to guarantee

educational continuity in the vast majority of

countries. For this and other reasons, the digital

gap and other gaps, have possibly become more

acute (Dreesen et al., 2020), hence the UN bet for a

widespread shift in the world of work towards

more inclusive and people-centered digitization

people (UN, 2020b). Perhaps this serious problem

supposes a knock on the socio-educational policies

implemented by different governments.

Although complementary efforts are

increasing in this regard, the commitment to

connectivity and access universal Internet should

be a goal close in time as governments' response to

this crisis.

It is about the inalienable and universal right

to education that it should entail in digital times,

such as, the right to connectivity, accessibility, and

the minimum endowment of technological device

for make it come true. This would be the case of

sectors of the population that do not have

connectivity or devices adequate, or sufficient in

families with several children, for the reception of

the contents and the interaction with the teachers.

Television in these cases can reduce this problem,

and even more so radio. These means of

communication are much more widespread,

accessible to the population and proven to be

effective in configure quality educational actions.

In any case, the global challenge must be to leave

no one behind, in accordance with the provisions

of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) of

the 2030 Agenda of United Nations.

As far as universities are concerned, beyond

what many of them had in their strategic plans with

forecasts for the future of online teaching, the

reality is that very few of them really were

prepared to urgently implement a fully digitized

educational model (u-Multirank,2020). In hasty

readings and knowledge of reality and the

implementation of irreplaceable and, in many

cases, little deliberate online systems, especially in

European and American universities and also with

the pioneering COVID experience of Chinese

universities (Bao, 2020), could to point out some

clues regarding the most relevant drawbacks found

in these educational practices emergency and

remote, which could serve to consider them, in

case of new total closures or partial of educational

facilities:

 Difficulty of reaching students who do not have connectivity or appropriate devices.

 Network saturation and low bandwidth, especially in institutions with large masses of

students.

 Dropout or discouragement situations of students who show low concentration and

persistence in online learning, offering very high

density modules or units for long-term, or poorly

motivating learning activities.

 Lack of student support and tutoring systems that motivate participation, permanence,

support for the resolution of academic and

psychological problems (Lozano-Díaz et al., 2020).

 Problems moving from the face-to-face image of the teacher, his gestures and his voice,

live, to one remote situation, in which sometimes

everything was left in the cold text.

 Cautions, resistance and even aversion of certain teaching groups to the use of technologies.

 Lack of technical support for face-to-face teachers unfamiliar with handling these

technologies interactive.

 Synchronous or asynchronous presentation session instances were not properly combined.

 A more consolidated model of formative and continuous evaluation was lacking reduced the

great difficulties of a massive final evaluation

online, especially in institutions with large

numbers of students.

 The different online evaluation models that met the criteria of reliable identification,

quality, equality, equity, respect for privacy, data

protection, strength of the technological

infrastructures, etc

In many cases, it was about over-turning

what was being done in the classroom, it was

considered an emergency teaching (Hodges et al.,

2020) or, better, remote emergency education, this

would include concepts such as teaching,

instruction, learning. This had nothing to do with

what would have been an education well-designed

and implemented in a format of digital distance

(Hodges et al., 2020). Besides that was not taken

into account the tiredness factor referred to the

synchronous replica, through the screen, of a face-

to-face class, “Zoom fatigue” (Wiederhold, 2020).

Naturally there will be those who will draw

conclusions from this situation regarding the

weaknesses of the distance education, without

stopping to think:

• that there was no planning,

• that there were connectivity and equipment

problems for many affected,

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• that there was no teacher training plan,

• nor of preparation of the students with

respect to the self-discipline and self-regulation of

their work, more necessary in these environments.

Also, for Romania case central and local

authorities have thus been faced with new

challenges, unprecedented in the last hundred

years, to manage the educational process that

traditionally involves communities of children and

young people in the best possible physical

distance, basic premise to limit the spread of the

new virus (Qiu et al., 2020). To this is added the

fact that the current school network in Romania

inherits for the most part the one before 1990,

characterized by overcrowded classes, especially in

urban areas, where an average of between 30 and

40 students study. Also, functional illiteracy places

Romania on the penultimate place in the European

Union because 42% of 15-years-old Romanian

students fail to use the information acquired in

school to solve their daily problems (Săgeată,

2021).

Although the last thirty years have made

significant progress in terms of children's rights,

40% of Romania's children still live in poverty or

are at risk of social exclusion, one of the highest

levels in the European Union. Major disparities

persist between the national average and the lives

of poor children in rural areas, Roma minority

children and children with disabilities.

About 400,000 children are still out of the

education system. More Romanian children and

young people leave school earlier than the

European average, although in 2019 their number

was at an all-time low of 15.7%. Moreover, 44% of

15-year-olds scored below the minimum literacy

level on the OECD PISA test.

If we think about the close link between lack

of education and lack of opportunities, the main

objective becomes to make sure that all children go

to school as much as possible, learn as well as they

can and thus have a better chance of success in life.

A large part of the solution is to give the

vulnerable access to quality inclusive education,

access until recently, that was situated on a

downward trend.

Although Romania has a wide range of

internet connectivity, steps are still needed to

ensure all resources and an integrated framework

for access to quality education in digital era.

Against the background of the public

consultation, 3 levels of digitalization in education

were identified:

- management and administration,

automation and anonymisation (records, electronic

catalog, reports, checklists, record of attendance /

absences, communication, track record, data

anonymization/protection)

- teaching activity: teaching-learning

processes and assessment activities (both training,

as well as the summative ones); counseling and

guidance activities, psychological and socio-

emotional support; extracurricular activities (clubs,

non-formal activities); remediation and recovery;

activities of promoting excellence and high

performance;

- and a cross-cutting level: communication

and collaboration efficiency (at school /

chancellery level, school-family relationship,

relationships and partnerships: school - local

government - NGO – environment business).

An extensive study carried out at the

beginning of the state of emergency, coordinated

by a consortium formed from the University of

Bucharest, „Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University of

Iași, Western University rom Timișoara and the

Institute of Educational Sciences offers some

important findings. Participants in the study, both

teachers and students complained that the use of

new technologies shows significant difficulties.

Both students and teachers said they were not used

to use these tools in the teaching / learning process.

Most students and teachers

teachers acknowledged that they do not have

sufficiently developed digital skills to could use

online learning tools, or to be able to design and

make enough of attractive to students.

Organizational actors from whom students and

teachers expect support as well as the resources

these groups need are fundamental elements of any

public policy analysis.

The teachers declared, at the time of

conducting the “Home School” study, that the

school principal (35% of the recorded responses) is

the main source of "guidance", the Ministry (along

with all other subordinate organizations, such as

the School Inspectorates, Institute of Educational

Sciences, Resource Centers and Educational

Assistance, etc.) was nominated as a source of

"guidance" by 25% of teachers surveyed, while

"Colleagues" were a source of support for about

23% of teachers.

The resources that teachers accessed were:

their own previous experience in use of online

learning tools, cited by 82% of respondents. The

personal experience is followed, in descending

order of importance by: “various tutorials found

online (78%), peer support groups such as

Facebook teacher groups (77%), training programs

in the field of ICT carried out through CCDs

(60%), the portal opened by Ministry of Education

on http://digital.educred.ro (60%), ideas for

activities with digital support from

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http://digitaledu.ro (59%), CRED workshops

conducted by videoconference (57%), resources

open educational programs collected by school

inspectorates in the last three years (56%),

programs training in the field of ICT carried out by

NGOs / companies (50%), and eTwinning platform

(47%).”

Introduction in the initial psycho-

pedagogical training programs of the disciplines

for the integration of technology in the teaching-

learning-assessment process is also mentioned. A

little a bit late (Order of the Ministry of Education

no. 4135 / 21.04.2020), however, given that since

2014 the European Council has also concluded

Recommends to the Member States of the

European Union: The rapid spread of the

instruments of digital learning and open

educational resources also create the need for

teachers to acquire a sufficient understanding of

them in order to be able to develop digital skills

and use them effectively and appropriately in

teaching. These new tools can it also helps to

ensure equal access to high-quality education for

all.

All this data suggests that it is not very

realistic to start from the assumption that switching

to teaching exclusively online can be done easily.

Beyond the fact that it exists households that do

not have internet access or a telephone signal, or

do not have one computer / laptop / tablet / mobile

phone, as well as a fairly high level of digital skills

low, self-isolation at home and moving the

educational process exclusively to the domestic

space some generated and other complicated

situations.

CONCLUSIONS

Certainly, during restrictions, solutions

were provided at non-university levels very

provisional that, although they will leave elements

for reflection to adopt certain innovations, a large

part of them will end once the crisis is over.

However, at universitary level it will probably be

different. The remote, digital, online and flexible

modalities will be used in a very widespread once

the pandemic is over.

That there are institutions and teachers who

are willing to return to the traditional face-to-face

model, for course. But can it be doubted that, even

among those who yearn for 100% presence, in the

future their educational practices will be modulated

and much more enriched, mediated or

complemented, by the digital technologies?

The impact of this pandemic and the

concomitant economic crisis have generated a

change in how, when and where student learning

occurs (Fox, et al., 2020). Pedagogical renewal and

innovation always recommended and, generally,

postponed, we now have the great opportunity to

become reality and gain in educational quality and

equity. Systems are needed for the immediate

future resilient educational institutions, with the

capacity to respond to emergency situations and

with safeguards for reduce inequalities that were

aggravated as never before. In reality, COVID-19

can occur as an accelerator of the transformation of

higher education that will mean that online and

flexible learning are guests they came to stay

(Naffi, 2020).

It is well known that an essential curricular

variable of any educational process is evaluation.

About her a great debate was established during

the restrictions that still survives, on more suitable

formulas to carry out evaluation strategies and

techniques, taking into account current problems to

implement a universal face-to-face assessment.

Romania ranks 26th out of the 28 EU

member states in the Economic Index and the

Digital Society (EIDS) for 2020. Based on data

prior to the pandemic, Romania's performance was

identical in four of the five measured EIDS

dimensions. Romania has a poor performance in

terms of digital public services and digital skills.

During this period, "teaching-learning" has

moved mainly in the online environment, and the

challenges that schools in Romania faced were

related to:

● Lack of predictability;

● Heterogeneous school network, with a

strong digital gap between schools;

● Insufficiently developed digital skills for

the efficient organization of the teaching process in

the online environment;

● Reduced access to technology and reduced

internet connectivity;

● The reduced possibilities of families in

providing support to the beneficiaries of education,

children, for participation in online lessons.

At present, the integrated approach to all

aspects of the digitization of public services,

including in the field of education is ensured by the

provisions of the National Strategy for the Digital

Agenda Romania 2020. Although Romania has a

wide range of internet connectivity, steps are still

needed to ensure all resources and an integrated

framework for access to quality education in

digital era.

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