Abstract:

During the period of COVID-19, in spring 2020, schools moved from face-to-face to online teaching and learning to support the continuation of the education. Teachers and students had a new experience of education. In nine European countries an innovative learning environment was developed by the European Commission innovation project “Up to University” (Up2U), which was used to support digital learning. The reception from both students and teachers was quite positive in all the countries. Although the Up2U project wasn’t directly focussed on formal education, the developed Up2U platform supported many teachers to meet the challenges of distance education during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The scope of this paper is to present the impact of the usage of a learning ecosystem based on the Next Generation Digital Learning Environment (NGDLE) principles in High School students. In eight countries (Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, Poland, Portugal, and Spain), almost 1000 schools participated in the pilot activities that were conducted by the Up2U project. During the pilot activities, secondary education teachers used the Up2U Learning Environment in order to prepare high school students towards tertiary education.

In order to evaluate the pilot activities, a total of 877 students answered the pre-and post-survey, which was mainly aimed at exploring their perceptions about the acquired skills before and after having participated in the pilot activities. In this paper we present the results of this survey and first conclusions that emerged from them. In Greece, a separate questionnaire was distributed to junior high schools students during the first phase of the COVID19 pandemic. The results of this questionnaire will be presented in this paper.

Keywords:

Secondary Education, Next Generation Digital Learning Environment, Up2U.