Abstract:

This paper aims to explore the role of the learner-friendly environment in alleviating LEAP-effects (legal, economic, academic, psychological), caused by the pandemic. After the outbreak of the coronavirus-19 the covid-related measures of constraint led to large-scale social distancing and segregation, deeply affecting personal and social relations, and exposing learners to feelings of isolation and uncertainty, loss of motivation and cognitive change. Obviously, the pandemic provoked a multitude of problems that negatively impacted the normal course of operations of schools and universities.

When some Moscow Universities faced the emergency situation, the staff devised a comprehensive approach to handling the crisis. The first step was to identify the challenges faced by the learners and teachers. Creating awareness about the challenges enabled us to detect the most relevant effects of the pandemic on the academic processes in the university. We further incorporated them into the acronym LEAP-effects (legal, economic, academic, psychological). Each group of effects was carefully examined by the relevant departments. We devised a measuring range for each group in order to create the yardsticks according to which the situation was assessed on a monthly basis. In particular, we evaluated the number of legal complaints, refusal from additional fee-based educational services, academic performance, and learner satisfaction.

The results of the monthly surveys were accurately incorporated into graphs to follow the dynamics of changes, which revealed the efficiency of our efforts. An important objective was to relieve the psychological tension imposed on learners by the stressful environment of the pandemic and quarantine restrictions. The staff strove to create the psychological climate that would help the learners overcome stress and enhance learner satisfaction. We tried to create learner-friendly environment that could leverage the best practices accumulated over years, deliver prompt and precise instruction to students and ensure efficient distant communication. Better performance and stress mitigation was achieved by gamification (incorporating game-based elements into the learning process) and songification (making singing motivational English songs a compulsory part of the academic process). We attached special attention to songification. Thus, every lesson started with a motivational song which was performed by the students in chorus. Usually those were the tunes of Russian pop songs. All lyrics were written by one of the authors of the article.

"Every time I close my eyes
I see seal cubs on the ice,
Every time I dream my dreams
I can fancy mountain streams
Now and then I use my mind
reaching stars of every kind
Like a whale I float and plunge,
Glimpsing corals, shells and sponge!"

Monthly analysis of our learner-friendly environment enabled us to come to the following conclusions:
The learner-friendly environment fostered gradual changes in students’ attitudes which led to the alleviation of LEAP-effects. In particular, number of legal complaints reduced by 35%, refusal from additional fee-based educational services slowed down by 30%, academic performance increased by 15%, learner satisfaction rose by 20%.

Keywords:

LEAP-effects, covid-related measures, songification, academic performance, learner satisfaction.