Teacher Support in Covid-19 Pandemic to Develop Blended Learning Disruptive Models in Higher Education

Abstract

Covid-19 pandemic has created significant changes in higher education institutions. After university lockdown, a transition from face-to-face learning to distance learning was unavoidable and several teachers and students had to approach new technologies. The DELTA (Digital Education for Learning and Teaching Advances) Research Group provided support to six degree programs at the University of Turin: each professor received specific trainings and the group constantly helped and checked the implementation of the online courses. In this paper the support provided during the emergency period has been analysed in order to evaluate the improvements in teaching methodologies, and to assess professors' transition to future blended learning disruptive models. The results show an important change in methodology for some courses, aiming at improving the online learning processes. The research data analysis and qualitative study about the usage of the Digital Learning Environment describe the courses' disruptive models. They are useful to understand which elements of the emergency response turned out to be positive and which ones to be unfavourable, in order to be able to redesign post-Covid higher education.