La digitalizzazione della didattica nelle università italiane durante la prima fase di emergenza Covid-19. Una prima esperienza di transizione digitale? Problemi e prospettive

Abstract

The pandemic has forced all organizations, public and private, to suddenly change the way they operate to adapt to the limitations imposed by governments. According to many authors, the pandemic period represented a moment of enormous acceleration of the digital transition process that we were all already experiencing. Even universities needed to convert all their assets very quickly according to remote/agile work paradigm. Teaching activities were reconfigured to be conducted with remote teaching tools, largely using digital communication platforms. This article presents the results of a research involving a national representative sample of university teachers. They were asked, on the one hand, to reconstruct the main features of the teaching experience during the first phase of the pandemic, and on the other, to evaluate its effectiveness and results. Finally, they were asked to evaluate how much the techniques learned could be useful in the post-Covid period in ordinary teaching and how useful they consider adopting a hybrid or blended model of teaching. The data presented allow us to offer some initial reflections on the effective acceleration of the digital transition process of university teaching and the actual level of transformation that the pandemic period has triggered.