This essay tries to trace the most important steps of Italian e-learning between 1995 and 2005, a crucial time for the success of the Distance Learning in Italy. From the first degree course entirely in e-learning (by the Politecnico di Milano) some excellence e-learning centers of research and experimentation were born until the…

The two main trends in the development of higher education worldwide are universal access and digital transformation. These trends are bringing about an increase in class sizes and the growth of online higher education. Previous studies indicated that both the large-class setting and online delivery threaten the quality, and the exploration of…

In the last year a new virus (SARS-CoV-2) and the disease caused by it (COVID-19) has quickly spread around the world, leading the World Health Organization to declare a public health emergency and, then, a global pandemic status. The strategies adopted by many countries to reduce the impact of the pandemic were mainly based on social distancing…

This work presents 'Dove sta di casa la scuola', an online course for teachers promoted by the Small School Movement during the COVID-19 emergency. The course aimed to provide alternatives to lecture-based distance learning using the domestic environment as a context for 'low-intensity' digital learning. Such an experience, involving 7000 Italian…

The Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) state of emergency has brought about a radical change in the way of teaching. In a questionnaire, we asked 120 teachers from Italian Primary, Middle and High Schools about the advantages and disadvantages of online teaching, the students' conduct during lessons and the methodologies applied to students with…

The focus of this research is how Sicilian state university mathematics professors faced the challenge of teaching via distance education during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Since the pandemic entered our lives suddenly, the professors found themselves having to lecture using an e-learning platform that they had never used before, and…

Research on concerns about Emergency Remote Teaching has focused on teaching and management strategies, with some studies considering learners' satisfaction, reactions, learning and overall acceptance. The present case study, based on a survey on 3,183 undergraduate and postgraduate learners, aimed at investigating engineering students'…

The present paper reports data from an original qualitative study that investigates how music students reacted to novel remote teaching strategies that emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic. A population of twenty learners enrolled at an Italian conservatory responded to an open-ended survey, verbalising their recent learning experiences concerning…

Young people today face an uncertain future. English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers in state education are investing their expertise in Online Community Projects (OCPs) as a digital mediation tool to help their students acquire intercultural awareness and experiment with new uses for technology. This qualitative study employs analytic…

The pandemic COVID-19 has brought the closure of schools of all levels and all universities in Italy, since early March 2020 up to the end of the teaching period (first half of June 2020). However, almost all universities guaranteed the continuity of educational and professional courses by using several distance education modalities. The purpose…

The paper describes the international research conducted in collaboration between the University of Padova, University of North Texas, and Windesheim University of Applied Sciences. The study explores how higher education faculty involved in professionalizing courses for the educational area perceive the pandemic-induced transition to digitalized…

This study aims to explore how teachers from four countries--France, Israel, Italy, and Germany--manage their teaching--learning activity in the context of lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic. About 700 teachers from the four countries participated in this study. They were given an online questionnaire that involved 22 open-ended items, in which…

Synchronous online language teaching involves the simultaneous employment of a range of techno-semio-pedagogical competences (Guichon, 2012). Indeed, given their flexibility and versatility, digital tools and the Internet can render teacher-student interactions dynamic. Among the necessary professional skills and strategies for online synchronous…

In the light of an educational emergency aggravated by the health emergency following the COVID-19 pandemic, the DELTA (Digital Education for Learning and Teaching Advances) Research Group developed four open online courses available to lower secondary school students and teachers. The four courses, devoted respectively to Numbers, Space and…

Italian legislation requires that all pupils with special needs be integrated in regular classes through cooperation between the class and special education teachers. After school closure in February 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, teachers had to work together to arrange online inclusive activities for all the pupils in their classes. The…