Abstract:

In the European Union, during the school year 2020-2021, the implementation of regulations on school topics have been prepared to improve achievement gaps and help the instructional activities design. In the light of the COVID-19 pandemic, the School at Home national program was launched, with a ministerial order which was approved according to which electronic devices required Internet access. Due to the same cause, purchased intelligent tables were distributed via the program to full-time primary, lower secondary, and upper secondary students. During these pandemic times, it was necessary to assess the eLearning infrastructure of the Romanian Primary and Secondary Education system in order to study the impact of eLearning of the Romanian education system and to comply to the European Union education system.

The current paper is part of the research of an Erasmus+ project and it analyses the Romanian educational system during the COVID-19 pandemic, in contrast with the project’s partners from Germany, Greece, Finland and Turkey. The scope of the current research is to develop a teachers-students-parents digital portal. 52 teachers, 50 parents and 205 students answered three online surveys, one for each category. The surveys regarded studying abroad, such that their needs can be satisfied by the proposed Erasmus+ digital portal. Based on the obtained results, teachers were interested in learning about consistent and equal motivational measures. They also wanted to know how they can create a simulation of a physical environment or situation during an online course. A topic of interest was how to engage students to meld into the mainstream group of classrooms. In what regards the parents, they would like to learn as immigrants how they can help their children to overcome their language problems in an online e-education system. Another important factor for parents was represented by how expensive school is and which is the cost of living in the destination country. Moreover, the results concerning students showed that they would like to be part of motivational activities adapted to enterprise realities. They also wanted to know how to get online psychological help to deal with stress if the need appears. An interesting fact is that they are aware that they need to keep their focus while studying online and this is a topic which concerns them. Overall, the results of the three online surveys showed that most of the interviewed persons are interested in e-learning, along with additional sources of information to understand the e-curriculum and e-courses. The outcomes gathered from questionnaires will be integrated in the proposed Erasmus+ teachers-students-parents digital portal. The beneficiaries of the system will be from European Union and non-European Union countries.

Keywords:

Education, online courses, healthcare, digital skills.