Conference Program

The digititalization of educational processes - impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic - has raised a number of critical issues and nodes around which the Higher Education system has always questioned itself. First of all, the elevation of teaching quality standards stems from a perceived need to innovate teaching methods and techniques through the assimilation of student-centered pedagogical practices. These teaching practices are coherent with the need to supply training for soft skills, which are considered crucial for joining the knowledge society. Secondly, it highlights the importance of providing training for Higher Education Teachers, centered on the acquisition of technical and interpersonal skills, which are increasingly in demand within connected learning environments. Starting from this premise, the goals of the ADVICE (Erasmus+)/Advancing digital competence in Higher Education project emerge, a scientific enterprise involving a network of four European Universities: University of Rome Sapienza; Collegium Civitas Polnska; University of Northampton; Agricultural University of Athens. The project raised reflection around methodological innovation implemented in the learning digital environments. Considering the specificities of the governance of the four university contexts, the research included a qualitative analysis of strategies and practices related to educational innovation policies of the European universities involved, started in the 2021-2022 biennium. In particular, the research units of the partner universities included: i. innovative teaching managers of the University and ii. Higher Education Teachers, expert in the field of digital communication, digital innovation, evaluation of digital policy. The semi-structured interviews were aimed to explore the following thematic areas: a) digital infrastructure of classrooms and spaces where blended teaching is delivered; b) training opportunities provided by University governance to reduce the gap in technical and relational skills within learning connected environments; c) teaching and relational strategies in use by teachers. The technical and socio-relational skills gap, complained by the teachers interviewed, was assessed against a set of questions that reconstructed the context in which the learning had been delivered (e.g., participation in innovative teaching training courses, specificity of the University’s teaching offer, etc.). This represents an interesting result from which evaluative guidelines and recommendations to be provided to stakeholders and decision makers involved in the European Higher Education system.

As part of the PCTO - Percorsi per le competenze trasversali e per l'orientamento promoted by the Ministry of Education (in the field School-Work Alternation), last school year (2022/2023), a project entitled: "Online/Onlife - Diritti in Internet" was experimented between EDI Onlus, a social cooperative born as a Save the Children spin-off to work as an operational partner in local education services and to develop innovative training according to the methodology of the rights approach and positive education, and Liceo F. D'Ovidio located in Larino, a town near Termoli on the Adriatic Sea in the Molise Region. 14 three-year students were reached from November to May 2023, for 30 hours. All the activities were implemented online and in face to face “laboratories” thanks to the socio - constructivist approach where the construction of knowledge takes place within the socio-cultural context in which the individual acts and thanks to the rights approach where each participant is put at the centre of learning through cooperation, collaboration (from different points of view such as cognitive, emotional, relational), in order to increase student involvement through the civic sense, the interest in community (Laffi,2014) and the concept of (digital) citizenship (Marshall,1950;Vuorikari,2022;COE,2023) for present and for future.Workshops were co-conducted with the facilitator, involving students in interactive activities through the use of technological devices, videos, specific material, slides where each of them touched upon the issue of “being a citizen in a digital way”. Especially in this project was used, as crucial tool, the Convention on the Rights of the Child: the socio-relational map of the all the educational activities regarding citizenship and active participation. Among the project’s goals: to promote the digital citizenship through the active socio-pedagogical approach and to strengthen the sense of responsibility of young net-users (in a positive and participative key); to reflect on the "digital skills", on the privacy and online safety through the conscious use of new digital media and social networks, on the online relationships between opportunities and risks (cyberbullying; sexting; revenge porn; online reputation; online violence), on the Democracy and on the social inclusion/exclusion. In this sense, the transformative intervention of reality from a sociological integrated point of view on these issues (Mills,1959) allowed not only to actively reflect on digital-related social phenomena between risks and opportunities, but also to make children protagonists by making them experience digital citizenship. Also, an ex ante, in itinere and ex post evaluation was conducted throughout the course, with the last meeting summarising what the students had done over the months. This experience could be one of that educational intervention focused on the social and civic participation to the “onlife” dimension (Floridi,2015) and one of tools capable to contain traditional, new social inequalities and social exclusions. Especially in the “inner areas” such as those of Molise Region.

The importance of digital skills was highlighted in Italian schools during the Covid19 pandemic; in fact, the implementation of distance learning has been difficult, demonstrating and increasing educational poverty and inequalities (OECD, 2020). In 2018, the International Computer and Information Literacy Study (ICILS), sponsored by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA), found that most Italian students do not have adequate digital and information literacy skills (Fraillon et al., 2020). Computer and information literacy (CIL) was defined as 'an individual's ability to use computers to research, create and communicate in order to participate effectively at home, school, work and in society' (Fraillon et al., 2019). Internationally, as well as in Italy, CIL scores have been found to be associated with students' socio-economic and cultural backgrounds and to increase accordingly (Fraillon et al., 2020). The aim of the present study is to deepen this relationship, taking into account the characteristics and differences in the digital domain of Italian schools. By deepening for Italy what emerges from the international report, we intend to show that schools are effective in reducing the digital divide, in the presence of specific resources and teaching practices. This study refers to Italian data collected by INVALSI in the framework of the IEA ICILS 2018 project, integrated by the INVALSI Statistical Service with the school ESCS index (socio-economic and cultural background). The sample consisted of 150 schools selected by probability proportional to size sampling; for each school, 20 eighth grade students were sampled, for a total of 2810 students with an average age of 13.26 years. Analyses were carried out using R and SPSS software. The variables and indices included in the database were analysed in relation to socio-economic and cultural background; the ESCS is categorised on the basis of quartiles: Low, Medium-Low, Medium-High and High. Territorial location was divided into three macro-areas: North, Centre and South. The results show that two thirds (67.7%) of the schools with low ESCS are located in the South macro-area, where other unfavourable conditions for digital literacy are more common. Differences were found not only in the proportion of 'connected' computers at school, but also in the availability of technical and pedagogical support for the use of ICT. However, students from 'disadvantaged' backgrounds perform better when digital and information literacy skills are learned in the school environment. These results highlight the role of schools in combating the digital divide, especially in geographical areas with 'disadvantaged' catchment areas in terms of ESCS. 

The last four years have been characterized by unexpected and deep changes in educational institutions and policies due to several crisis disruptions on the global scenario: climatic, pandemic and war crisis have been lacerated the social and brought to knees individual psychic systems, institutional policies, but also deeply questioning values and crumbling symbolic sphere. Increasing social and psychological malaises have been registered: anxiety and depression have been uncontrolled and widespread features of many young students’ life (mainly within secondary schools and universities). Unprecedent sense of oppression and limitation has been felt by young generations. This impact has deconstructed space and time (symbolic sphere), particularly emptying horizons of meaning into individual and collective lives. Only digital devices, old and new media have been nurturing the line of conduct of social life. The digitalization of education has been experienced on the one hand as a fundamental anchor of salvation (so that in the immediate of pandemic it has permitted to many educational institutions to connect members of the educational community); on the other hand, it has been considered as the ultimate fatal blow to the school and universities. Future, social justice and the idea itself of education has been basically mined by this situation. Exploring recent studies on the shift given by this scenario, this paper tries to relaunch the idea of education between relational sociology, morphogenetic approach and critical theory, namely stressing the notion of reflexivity as a very core issue to understand the possible future idea of education beyond the crisis “earthquakes”. Relations are the very “stuff” of the social, as relational sociology basically maintains, and human relations flourish through internal conversation of its members. The future of a healthy educational relations depends on the common project of a (future) society which is capable to shape new forms of relations and to encourage individuals to fix and to aim their own purposes in regard with a relational view and a reflexive impulse. Finally, this paper engages social justice and education issues which are consolidated topics of agendas across world policies, but they seem to disintegrate under the beats of changing social, economic and political conditions. The first aim for the fulfillment of social justice into educational polices is the equal access to resources and informations; but it doesn’t only mean access to material elements, it rather implies that psycho-social and existential designs must be assumed into individual lives. The more complex is the scenario, the more several subjects are involved into social process toward educational policies; it means not only that more and more stakeholders are required into defining new lines, but it means that a reflexive coefficient is necessary in order to fix and to grasp new aims. Pluralism (the paradigm for the global scene) implies more reciprocal actions and also more engaged subjects which are active parts. I use normative reciprocity as possible theoretical and analytical tool in order to engage this view.

How has the life of young university students changed after the digital revolution brought about by the pandemic?To navigate through the new galaxy of university student life, it is necessary to consider first and foremost the perspective of the students, after the recent events of the Covid-19 pandemic. This important challenge has been taken up by a group of researchers from various Italian universities who have embarked on a third national quantitative survey to investigate various specific aspects of student life in universities. As emerged in recent scientific works (Arenghi et al., 2020; Garcia Morales et al., 2021; Aristovnik et al., 2021), the forced use of digital teaching during strong lockdown conditions has indeed caused numerous problems for students, not only in terms of knowledge and learning, but also in terms of psychological and social health. The Covid-19 pandemic has effectively fragmented and deconstructed university learning environments, turning them into multi-centric spaces compared to the classroom, and this sudden dematerialization of the university and personal relationships, along with the need to quickly adapt to the use of technologies necessary for distance learning, has had a negative impact on the motivation to study for some, as well as influencing their emotional states and satisfaction. The reduced possibility of physical interaction between students and teachers, and among students themselves, has also marked a negative point in relational terms for those who habitually attended universities.To investigate the complexity of the changes that have occurred in this dynamic period, two quantitative studies have been conducted (the first in 2020 involved over 241,000 students, the second in 2021-22 involved over 23,000), and a third is ongoing, all carried out in collaboration with the National Council of University Students, using a CAWI methodology, leveraging various internal and external networks for sample recruitment, involving students distributed throughout the entire Italian territory. The questionnaires investigated structural aspects of university life, evaluations of teaching, social capital, networks, well-being, values, life priorities, and allowed participants to recount their degree path, amidst obstacles, transformations, and possibilities (Monteduro, 2020; Monteduro, Nanetti, 2022). The data collected through the research, particularly in the second study, have allowed the identification of emerging clusters of highly differentiated students, considering them in relation to their value/dimensionality and their psychological and structural well-being. The identified trajectories require differentiated responses from the university system and political decision-makers. In particular, differences in services and subsidies entail inequalities in studies that need to be reconsidered, given that some students would like to attend in-person classes but do not have the material possibility. For this reason, some local committees have called for the full continuation of distance learning (in its various forms). Regarding the psychological dimension, the context of uncertainty has impacted the openness to socialization and the positive vision of the future. The strengthening of psychological support in almost all Italian universities and the psychological bonus are some immediate response. The sense of loss among students requires new interventions that can help them overcome the discomfort experienced in recent years.