Relevance of Digital Education and its different aspects of development
A. Macan
Board of European Students of Technology
Brussels, Belgium
A. Yilmaz Yildrim
Board of European Students of Technology
Brussels, Belgium
C. Cojan
Board of European Students of Technology
Brussels, Belgium
V. Pipidis
Board of European Students of Technology
Brussels, Belgium
Conference Key Areas: Teaching methods, Digitalisation & Hybrid models
Keywords: digitalisation, digital education, teaching methods
ABSTRACT
The ongoing digitalisation of the learning processes has both opportunities and obstacles for the educational attainment of students in STEM subjects. In this paper, we summarise student experiences with digitalisation during the COVID-19 pandemic and provide recommendations for how to improve teaching methods of STEM education. The research was conducted through focus groups in a workshop format at 15 European STEM universities across 8 different countries obtaining 147 responses from students. This paper also aims to analyse how the digital competency of both students and professors has been impacting the effectiveness of new teaching methods and education tools during online classes since the start of the pandemic. Students have a variety of needs, with some students preferring the flexibility and anonymity online work gives them, while others thrive better when they are face to face with instructors and dislike the limitations that exist in virtual communication. In addition, we looked at how students view changes in the evaluation of projects and tests that have occurred to prevent cheating. The results show the relevance of digital education and which aspects of it need to be developed further. The paper further explores possible solutions for the issues identified in this research, including learning, methodological and skill development aspects. Overall, we propose hybrid classrooms where students have the choice to explore which method of learning best fits them and how professors can support them to ensure the best educational outcome.
1.1 General overview
The educational crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic affected students worldwide, while teaching has been digitally transformed in the form of online learning as an alternative approach to education. This change has had a large effect on students in STEM fields since a substantial part of their program depends on project work and practical learning, which requires access to technology and close communication with instructors and group members.
By testing out the new hybrid educational model during the pandemic [1], the approach to learning has shifted to student-centred learning (SCL) where students are encouraged to take more responsibility for their education. The requirements of the digital era applied to students as the next labour force even before the pandemic, and the sudden need to shift the educational model accelerated the process of the universities acting as facilitators of the SCL model [2]. Many stakeholders have been investigating online learning in European universities stemming from the pandemic and tried to identify the differences between individual universities (tools, platforms, applications). The need to analyse students’ input on challenges and opportunities for improvement has become evident.
1.2 Goal and objectives of the research
The main question tackled by this study is how COVID-19 has impacted Higher Education in terms of three objectives.
To address Objective 1: Gather and examine the actions that European STEM Universities have taken in reacting to the COVID-19 pandemic of the goal, this study sought to map innovative teaching methods, digital assessment methods, and support needed by educators and students.
To address Objective 2: Gather students’ perceptions and opinions, this study aimed to evaluate how the measures taken as part of the digital move have impacted the engagement of students with their studies; and locate the main roadblocks and catalysts of the digital move for students, both in terms of digital tools and accessibility, and of digital skills.
To address Objective 3: Analyse the learnings, the study aimed to help define the most effective balance of online and offline education in the post-pandemic context; and to enhance and complement the engagement of in-person education with an optimised online one-way information transfer
2 METHODOLOGY
2.1 Data sources
During this study, primary and secondary research were conducted in the period of January until April 2021. Primary data sources were collected through in-depth interviews of students from each target university with the goal of probing what new changes were introduced to the Higher Education activities portfolio, including the
possible new teaching methods, new equipment, or infrastructure used for learning processes and support given to students and educators. Data collected through primary research was analysed and used in the creation of secondary research. Secondary data has been collected mainly through focus groups, obtaining 147 responses from students. Focus groups were conducted in a workshop format from 15 European Universities with the goal of gathering information on students’ opinions about the transition to digital education and what obstacles they have experienced, as well as what opportunities for improvement they have observed. The workshop consisted of an introduction, statement voting, brainstorming and clustering of the identified problems and opportunities. The last section was conducted in the format of World Café, the students had to focus on 5 different areas: Digital competencies; Digital tools; Teaching methods; Assessment methods; and Interaction. Methods used for data analysis include the statistical method, the method of induction and deduction and the comparative method.
3 RESULTS
3.1 Digital competences
Firstly, this section investigates the influence of students’ competences in digital education. Secondly, this section analyses the impact of the educators’ digital competency on the learning process [3] Digital competences encompass responsible usage, and interaction with digital technologies in the following areas: Information and data literacy, communication and collaboration, digital content creation, safety, and problem solving [4]
3.1.1 Results
Fig. 1 demonstrates that most of the students think that they have barely sufficient digital competencies to move digital education without hindering the learning process. Therefore, there is still a portion of students that the learning process has been limited by their digital competencies. As it can be seen in Fig. 1, students' opinions on engagement are similar to the learning process.
Figure 1. Histogram showing students' answers to the following questions, normalised from a minimum of 0 to a maximum of 3; with 3 being absolute agreement and 1,5 being a neutral opinion and zero being disagreement.
On the contrary, students’ opinion on the limiting impact of educators’ digital skills is dominant. Learning process and engagement have a similar trend. During the World Café, students mentioned the hindered impact of the poor digital skill level of professors. 87% of students stated that professors could not display information in an efficient way. Besides that, some of the professors were not capable of using the features of the digital tools in a way to engage students more in the lectures (40%).
3.1.2 Recommendations
Transitioning to digital education has allowed students to practise their digital skills, and their current level of digital skills didn't hinder their learning process significantly Educators’ digital competencies improve the learning experience by helping professors pedagogically [3], but educators’ poor level of digital competencies hindered the learning process. In order to improve the learning experience in online education, universities should focus on educators’ digital skills and provide training courses to use online platforms efficiently [5] It would be needed to conduct a thorough study on digital skills of educators and assess their needs to improve digital competencies.
3.2 Teaching Methods & Digital Tools
Through teaching methods, students can engage in learning activities, reflect on them, use higher-order thinking and work in groups. Previous studies in STEM education have found that active teaching and learning methods, focused on interaction, provide more interest and engagement in the students’ activity in the class [6]. Learning to use digital tools to deliver lessons has positively affected online teaching methods in most universities [7]. The aim of this section is to analyse the effort and attitude of universities facing this challenge, and in which way they chose digital tools to enhance teaching and learning opportunities. In that direction, universities had to use online platforms to enable interaction during lectures and group work, which is a crucial aspect of the learning process. Microsoft Teams, Google Classroom, and Miro are some of the online platforms which enable the interaction and collaboration between peers in the online environment [10].
3.2.1 Results
According to the presented data, it was stated by a majority (Fig. 2) that being able to follow recorded lectures at the preferred place and at the chosen schedule was a great advantage. This fact had an impact on the understanding of the subject and the final results of the final evaluation. During the class an enormous potential to make use of different information sources and activities exists.On the other hand the students admitted that online environments are full of distractions and difficult to remain focused, signalling caution on their extended use. They are related to the high amount of tasks, lack of physical contact and interaction and the content of the lectures. One of the problems stated by more than 67% of the students is that practical lectures in person are crucial for a complete and efficient learning experience. The tools (ppt) and format (non-interactive lecture format) were
maintained and only the platform changed, and some courses with easy possibility to be adapted were not. This was seen as a lack of innovation and adaptation to the new environment.
Students from six universities declared the environment was monotonous and the tools were not used to their full potential in order to engage the people present in the class. The results of the focus groups show that 73% of universities used recorded lectures, which allowed students to rewatch the lectures at their own pace and choose their own learning schedule. It was also shared that with the usage of different tools, it is easier to keep the engagement of the students in the lecture. Furthermore, there were mentions of significant improvements in the usual platforms universities use, as not all learning materials were centralised in a fully-integrated platform before.
Fig. 3 shows the impact of technological tools used in the courses from the perspective of students. There is a significant shift toward the mindset that technological tools used were sufficient for students to effectively follow online lectures. In comparison, the balance is significantly shifted towards tools not being sufficient for the practical lectures, with almost 60% of students’ voting so. There is a
Fig.2: Engagement and learning process benefits from following lectures in a recorded format. The answers are normalised from 0 to 3; with 3 being absolute agreement and 1,5 being a neutral opinion and zero being disagreement.
Figure 3. Overview of the impact of used technological tools in online education. The answers are normalised from 0 to 3; with 3 being absolute agreement and 1,5 being a neutral opinion and zero being disagreement.
balance between students deeming tools affecting their participation and engagement both positively and negatively However, as it is shown, technological tools didn’t have a significant impact on students’ performance nor learning process in online classes. Access to a stable internet network, as well as equipment that supports digital tools is crucial, and 60% of our respondents shared they encountered issues with it. The main issue identified for STEM students was the lack of tools that simulate practical activities, especially for work with advanced technology and laboratory work, which was noted by 73% of university students.
Fig. 4 demonstrates that students have diverse opinions on this comparison with a slight bias towards decreasing productivity with online group work. It seems that the lack of interactivity among them sets a major drawback to their productivity. Nonetheless, the non-negligible portion of students thinks that online group work increased their productivity.
normalised from 0 to 3; with 3 being absolute agreement and 1,5 being a neutral opinion and zero being disagreement.
A highly mentioned problem (47%) is the ineffective communication in digital education with their colleagues and teachers. According to students, their performance has decreased on group projects and exams, as a result of ineffective communications during online lectures. Another opportunity mentioned by students (33%) is flexibility to plan their schedule around online education. Lastly, workshops have investigated how the lack of being physically present at the university affected the participation and engagement with lectures. As depicted in Fig. 4, there is an outweighing opinion that lack of physical presence hindered the engagement and participation of students in the lectures.
3.2.2 Recommendations
Modifications in teaching methods have not been substantial, mainly tackling the platform used, not the content itself. Practical lessons are an essential part of some degrees and these were evaluated by the students to be better done in an onsite manner Students feel like their learning and understanding are increased when they are able to perform the experiment or the project themselves. For teachers, more
Figure 4. Histograms showing how productivity changed for students in online group work The answers aretime is needed in order to revise their teaching methods for the new environment and also for students to adapt to the new online tool.
Recommendations for how to improve teaching methods of STEM education are the following:
a) having all the lectures, guidelines and practical courses on a platform, so that students will be able to access them anytime; b) preparing exercises based on the lectures/videos previously provided on the platform and discussed during the actual hour; c) having the possibility to work both alone and in teams; d) providing the possibility to work with scientific tools and analyse real data from laboratories/industries; e) creating preparation tests for the final exams that can be retaken for as many times as needed and with different possible questions; f) giving students the opportunity to participate in class in smaller groups/specific laboratories; g) engaging the students to interact with the actual research topics in their fieldsexample: using these references for presentations. Teaching approach in this new, digital environment depends heavily on professors’ ability to learn, and ultimately manage digital tools [8]. The difference in the digital competence of students and their professors is evident, where professors are expected to be experts and mentors, while in reality, they are still adapting to digital tools. To properly introduce the hybrid model, educators need continuous training and an environment where experimenting and innovating in both choices of digital tools and their purpose of implementation is encouraged. To ensure a proper environment, it is advised that universities tackle internally the choice of digital tools, via a centralised approach, and reduce the workload of professors when it comes to lecture design.
It is noted that some courses cannot be well adapted to online education, thus there is a high need to develop tools that accommodate the need of STEM students for practical lessons. While complete substitution of hands-on practice is not recommended, there is a remarkable space for improvement of existing tools used for practical learning, with many different potential ways open by designing remote practicals through recordings, simulations, quizzes, real and simulated data and augmented reality technology or gamification [9]. There is a significant distinction in the answers to the posed questions which addresses productivity and expressing themselves during lectures. These results demonstrate that students have varying preferences according to their personality or need for flexibility.
A majority of students agreed on a certain opinion: Lack of physical presence has negatively impacted students’ participation in and engagement with their lectures. In addition to that, the perception of educators towards digital education is an important factor for the engagement of students with lectures. Educators should have a positive perception towards the usefulness of digital tools as a facilitator of the lectures [3], and motivate students in a way to participate in lectures as a helpful educator [11,12]
3.3 Digital Assessment
Our goal regarding this section is to show how much the assessment methods have changed during the pandemic, how the evaluation changed, how the teachers
assure the fairness of their students and what are the main positive and negative aspects of online assessments from students’ perspective.
3.3.1 Results
Most of the universities presented a significant or partial change in assessment methods - for example: cancelling an exam and moving the grade to a project, changing a closed book exam to an open book exam, etc. According to the received responses, four main assessment methods (Fig. 5) that have been used during the evaluation of the students are further considered: written exams in universities, written online exams, oral online exams and assignment-based examinations.
One of the main fears from the beginning of the global crisis caused by the pandemic was the assurance of qualitative education and the academic integrity of the students. The reformation of the evaluation to a method where controlling the class is less crucial was desirable and a common approach was the change to an assignment-based assessment. One result was the clear trend in which students found the assignments a way to improve their learning. Some students also stated that mid-term exams, projects and continuous assessments (in the form of assignments) helped them to reduce the workload of final exams and develop a deeper understanding of the subject matter.
There were also some disadvantages noticed by students. Almost all of the World Cafe groups (67%) mentioned that they were overworked by the larger number of assessments that were used to (partially) replace traditional exams. Some students even stated that they were suffering from burnout. Another interesting point: the online-only format of a lot of group projects and labs was considered less efficient, causing students to spend more time on these tasks (33%). Some assignments also cannot be properly translated to an online format and this caused less impactful learning for the related projects (25%). Some students mentioned as a problem that the exam was made harder than in previous years (42%), time requirements were more strict (33%) and students were not allowed to go back to modify answers they previously submitted (33%). Despite these measures, students still found that
Fig. 5: Histogram with an overview of the assessment methods used The answers are normalised from 0 to 3; with 3 being absolute agreement and 1,5 being a neutral opinion and zero being disagreement.cheating was possible with relative ease (42%). Furthermore, students' performance during assessments was disrupted both by logistical issues and by a misunderstanding how certain digital tools worked (42%). The most-mentioned advantage of online assessment was that this kind of assessment (be it oral exams, project presentations, thesis defences, etc.) is less stressful. This lack of stress had a positive impact on performance in the exam (67%).
3.3.2 Recommendations
With the COVID-19 outbreak, most of the universities (75%) changed their assessment method to one of three formats: written online exams, oral online exams and assignment-based examinations. These methods are less considered stressful and time-saving by students. Another clear advantage that came up with the adaptations is the learning outcome: Project-based assessments and open book exams are preferred compared to conventional final exams with respect to understanding the subjects throughout the course. On the other hand, adaptation in the assessment method also brought some problems. Assignment-based examinations caused students to be overworked with more assignments, which is why this format is considered less efficient by students. Logical issues and measures against cheating negatively impacted the students’ performance during exams, nevertheless measures against cheating were considered ineffective. The recommendations would be to use „open-book” evaluations, presentations-based ones or team-based evaluations using the analysis of experimental data sets.
4 SUMMARY
The pandemic made universities and educators shift online, but only some have managed this transformation successfully. Some mirrored the same teaching and assessment methods from live to online environment, which affected students negatively Mainly it channelled outwards through higher disengagement rates, increased stress, etc. However, there are cases of universities which transformed their methods by incorporating digital tools which positively affected interaction in the digital classroom. This change enabled effective usage of digital tools, online collaboration and knowledge transfer. Further research needs to be conducted to have a full understanding and overview of the digital education, from both students’ and educators’ perspective.
Lessons learned, can be summarised as following:
● Digitalisation is an opportunity to improve the learning process;
● Professors need to improve their digital competences and incorporate improved teaching methods which are adjusted to the online environment;
● If digitalisation is done properly, the learning can be more engaging and effective, and pandemic can be used as an accelerator of this change.
This paper invites professors and universities to start investing in structural changes regarding teaching, to unleash the potential of digitalisation.
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