HIT BUT NOT OVERWHELMED. A MODEL TO CAPTURE THE EFFICACY OF DISTANCE LEARNING: THE REPORT FROM REGIONE LIGURIA (ITALY)

Distance teaching during the period of the Covid 19 pandemic represented a great challenge for teachers forced to change the established practices of teaching. Also thanks to the support and actions implemented by the regional project "Liguria Digital School" financed with ESF funds by the Liguria Region in support of the Ligurian education and training system, teachers of Liguria have faced the challenge knowing that they can rely on the support of the project and for that they have not been overwhelmed by difficulties.

This paper illustrates the results of a survey carried out to detect the remote learning experience during the school year 2020/2021 according to an original research model developed within the “Scuola Digitale Liguria” project. The survey involved over 2,500 of the Project Community.

The model is based on the DigCompEdu framework and makes it possible to identify the innovative digital teaching practices consolidated after two school years of remote learning. The model presents 4 dimensions, each of which declined in observation criteria for which specific indicators are identified for the data collection.

The four dimensions are:
1) Organization (referring to DigCompEdu Professional Engagement area)
2) Didactics (referring to DigCompEdu Digital Resources, Teaching and Learning, Assessment areas)
3) Inclusion (referring to DigCompEdu Empowering Learners area)
4) Digital skills (referring to DigCompEdu Facilitating learners' Digital competence).

Organization dimension investigates the practices and the advantages perceived as result of ICT based collaboration and communication among colleagues, with families and with local stakeholders; it also focuses on the effect of remote teaching on traditional organizational practices and on the development of new ones, as well as on the training actions carried out to face the new teaching. The Didactic dimension detects the teaching practices adopted by teachers during remote teaching regarding physical and virtual classroom settings, video-conference lesson models, teaching materials used / developed, learning activities (with related digital artefacts required) proposed to students, assessment with digital tools. Specific attention is dediated to collaborative learning and to the impact of remote learning and digital tools for subjects matters. The model allows to capture teachers' perception of the effectiveness of distance teaching on learning results and teachers’ self-efficacy perception as “digital teachers”. The Inclusion dimension investigates the elements of remote and innovative teaching, with focus on students with SEN. Finally, the Digital Skills dimension offers an account of the activities specifically carried out for the training of teachers in digital skills with particular attention to well-being and safety as well as the perception by teachers of the growth of their students in digital competence, the latter declined according to the DigComp 2.1 framework.

The results of the survey are compared with those of a previous one that the regional project "Liguria Digital School" had conducted at the end of the 2019/2020 school survey characterized by the conclusion of the school survey in the spring due to the Covid 19 emergency.