COVID-19 forced higher education institutions to reinvent themselves. The (usually) face-to-face education has swapped to distance contingency education. This change brought about numerous challenges that impose adjustments in several dimensions, such as pedagogical strategies and the dependence on teaching platforms and computer systems—and, above all, the new relationship between the various actors (students, teachers, and management staff). All the sudden changes, combined with uncertainty concerning what was happening, created several strategies and options. This paper has the main purpose of analyzing the scientific production on higher education of EU27 academic institutions during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic in journals indexed in Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science and Elsevier’s Scopus. The sample is composed of 22 articles in total. The results show that the articles were published in 19 journals; their main focuses are Higher Education, COVID-19, and distance learning. In our database, we find several types of concerns, which shows that HEIs have a wide range of dimensions. We intend this article to be an instrument, not only to identify what was done in 2020, but to point out clues for the future.

The emergence of new technologies such as IoT and Big Data, the change in the behavior of society in general and the younger generation in particular, require higher education institutions to "look" for teaching differently. This statement is complemented by the prediction of the futurist Thomas Frey, who postulates that "in 14 years it will be a big deal when students learn from robot teachers over the internet". Thus, it is necessary to urgently begin a disruption of current teaching models, to be able to include in these processes the new technologies and the daily habits of the new generations. The early usage of mobile devices and the constant connection to the Internet (social networks, among others) mean that the current generation of young people, who are reaching higher education, has the most technological literacy ever. In this new context, this article presents a disruptive conceptual approach to higher education, using information gathered by IoT and based on Big Data & Cloud Computing and Learning Analytics analysis tools. This approach will, for example, allow individualized solutions taking into account the characteristics of the students, to help them customize their curriculum and overcome their limitations and difficulties, throughout the learning process .

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Abstract. An important revolution is taking place in information technology with the introduction of the cloud computing paradigm, which is expected to bring several new benefits and services to customers. Cloud computing makes it possible to detach the process of building the infrastructure and service delivery to end users by redefining the business models of software and hardware, so that customers stop purchasing goods to buying services. This paper presents the state of the art of cloud computing and discusses the key challenges of an ongoing research work, focused on the applicability of IT governance to the migration of existing systems to the cloud.

The paradigm in higher education is changing due to the pressure imposed on the one hand by the new technologies and on the other by the characteristics (habits and skills) presented by the students who arrive at the universities. These characteristics are not compatible with the teaching methodologies used up until the present, the traditional model (lectures) consolidated in the nineteenth century. Thus, teachers using active learning have attracted much attention because they stimulate motivation and autonomy to achieve more competencies on the part of the students and are aligned with the guidelines, for example the European Standards and Guidelines for Quality in Higher Education. In order to respond to these new challenges, an innovative pilot project was developed, from the pedagogical point of view, implemented in a 1 st Cycle course (Management and Information Systems) and using various active methodologies. In this context, a model composed of three Active Learning techniques (Group Project, Peer Review and Peer Teaching) was developed and implemented within the framework of the "New Tendencies in ITs" course, 1 st semester, 2 nd year, called ECLECTIC approach. The results obtained are very promising, because they have allowed students to engage in and out of the classroom and have resulted in an approval rate of more than 80%.