Abstract:

The sudden arrival of the pandemic Covid-19 has brought obvious disruption to the ‘normal’ functioning of all areas of life, promising lasting change in some of them. The educational sector is one such area, where deep and long-term changes will surely emerge as a result of the challenges and experiences currently being faced. The focus of this paper is on higher education and the Erasmus experience, studied here from a student, rather than an institutional, perspective, with a view to gaining a deeper understanding of the current and future impacts of Covid on the experience and the Erasmus model itself.

An Erasmus study period abroad is based on physical and structured international mobility, during which students experience life and learning in a linguistic and cultural environment different from their own. They widen their worldview and gain life skills at the same time as they continue their studies in a new context. Covid has changed both the pedagogical and the social contexts of this experience, involving remote and hybrid learning, partial and total lockdowns, social distancing and limited social interaction. The classroom experience itself, characterised by social distancing, mask wearing and hygiene protocols, provides a less than appealing social setting, one which is far from conducive to the development of interpersonal and intercultural communicative interaction. Indeed, the impact of the widespread use of Zoom and other video-conferencing tools in the emergency conditions imposed by Covid has arguably been to make the learning experience more passive, isolated and uni-directional.

So what of the Erasmus experience? This paper looks at the impacts of Covid on the experiences of mobility students during the second semester of 2019/2020 and the first semester of the current academic year 2020/2021. Who are the students who, despite the pandemic, chose to undertake a period of study abroad (student flows), what were their motivations, expectations and concerns, and what were their experiences and stories? A particular focus of this inquiry is on the intercultural dimension of these exchanges and the impact of Covid on the opportunity to develop intercultural relationships in/with the host community.

Keywords:

Erasmus, Covid-19, student experience.