Digital Readiness and Competitiveness of the EU Higher Education Institutions: The COVID-19 Pandemic Impact

Abstract

Nowadays, students expect that their university will not only provide a valuable source of practical knowledge for them, but will also be ready to offer appropriate distance learning opportunities both on a daily basis to diversify and enrich the study process experience and during global pandemic crises, which will probably be the reality of their lives in the next decades. The novelty and topicality of this study is justified by the need to assess the COVID-19 pandemic impact on the European Union higher education system and its adaptability to switch from traditional to remote study forms. The objectives of the study were: 1) to analyse the need to improve digital skills in the European Union by investigating the achievements of the Digital Economy and Society Index; 2) to assess the current digital environment of Latvian public universities and conduct an in-depth study of the digital environment of Latvia University of Life Sciences and Technologies. The research methodology is based on the desk study, social survey, comparative analysis and logical construction research methods. The results of the study revealed the digital gap that still exists between the more developed Nordic European countries and the less developed Southern and Eastern European countries. However, detailed analysis of the situation in Latvia leads to the conclusion that Latvian higher education institutions have significantly increased the amount of digital content in both external and internal communication systems and can offer competitive educational services that comply with the contemporary education requirements.

EU27 Higher Education Institutions and COVID-19, Year 2020

“…The focus of most articles is distance learning or the change from face-to-face to distance learning. There are several perspectives, like mobile learning methodology [34] and gamification [35], for a specific subject [36,37]; for a specific group of students, such as international mobility students [38] or first-year students [39]; concerned with the quality of educational process on online platforms [40], the level of communication of social responsibility by higher education institutions [41] or technical conditions of distance learning [42]; adaptation of the learning process [43], concern about connecting to the digital world [44][45][46]; the influence of some factors on students' acceptance of shifting education to distance learning [47], Evaluation of the Emotional and Cognitive Regulation [48], comparison of face-to-face classes with distance learning [49] by the student's perspective [50,51], teacher's perspective [43,52], organization [53], or various actors [54].…”

“…Most studies included surveys answered by students. the sample size varies widely: from 100 or less [38,39,51], 250 or less [37,40,45,46,49,50,55], less than 1000 students [42,44,54], or more than 1000 [47,48]. Two studies use the General Extended Technology Acceptance Model for E-Learning (GETAMEL) [39,47], one study uses the Digital Citizenship Behavior Scale (DCB) [45] and another uses the Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (CERQ) [48].…”

“…Still, Latvian higher education institutions have significantly increased digital content in external and internal communication systems. They can offer competitive educational services [44].…”

Digitainability—Digital Competences Post-COVID-19 for a Sustainable Society

“…However, the digital divide exists in the differences in access and use (consumption and production) of the digital and is deeply linked to the cultural, economic and social conditions of individuals, as well as their gender and age [79,[106][107][108], which hinders sustainable development [21,104] in a post-COVID-19 context [103,109]. For example, the "COVID-19 Infodemic" with fake news focusing on COVID-19 [35,36,110] created situations of misinformation that science communication found difficult to clarify [111][112][113][114][115][116][117].…”

Applying Best Practices from Health Communication to Support a University’s Response to COVID-19

“…The impacts and challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic on higher education institutions (HEIs) have been profound, with rapid shifts to new online-only instruction due to the need for remote work and instruction during periods of self-isolation (Crawford et al, 2020;Peters et al, 2020;Zalite & Zvirbule, 2020), negative psychological responses and college students' mental health (Baloran, 2020;Huckins et al, 2020;Zhai & Du, 2020), and case-by-case or summarized reopening strategies for universities of various countries and districts (Cheng et al, 2020;Quattrone et al, 2020).…”