Abstract:

Background:
Sustainable Educational & Emotional Model (SEEM) was initially presented in 2015 at the EDULEARN15 conference. Therefore, EDULEARN has been the promotional platform that has made SEEM scientifically and internationally visible. Five years later, SEEM proved to be a visionary idea and has developed both as an interactive teaching practice and as a dynamic theoretical model.
The 2020 edition of EDULEARN happened in extraordinary times. It was an inspiring event, which gave an impetus for further development of SEEM and has encouraged the current research paper. The overall aim is to present SEEM as a possible solution of the educational challenges in times of COVID-19 epidemic. Further, examples are given from the academic areas of public health and social medicine, naval engineering and informatics.

SEEM - refreshing the theory:
SEEM is an integrative model that respects the fundamental principles of interactive teaching and positive education, utilising the potential of technologies. SEEM builds on specific context (academic and epidemic), content (the concrete subject) and methodologies as well as the actors (educators and students). Methodology is based on the three pillars of SEEM:
1) interactive teaching sustained by the values of freedom, holism and respect;
2) technology application - COVID-19 crisis has strengthened this pillar;
3) positive emotions (obligatory jokes).

SEEM - successful applications:
Medicine, naval engineering and informatics meet in higher education through SEEM. Therefore, the practical examples will be given from the fields of social medicine and public health (e-learning and digitalisation at Medical University of Varna), engineering graphics and seaworthiness (interactive textbooks and testing at the Nikola Vaptsarov Naval Academy), informatics and game development (open source course at Sofia University, Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics).
COVID-19 epidemic has facilitated the wider introduction of technologies in the conservative academic environments in Bulgaria. Rapid digitalisation of the teaching materials and the adaptation to online testing needed integration at all the educational levels and among all the actors in the field. Generally, SEEM supported the fluent transition from face-to-face to remote teaching.

Conclusion:
The COVID-19 crisis, has not collapsed the higher education, but has revealed its strengths and weaknesses, and has changed the traditional thinking about how education can and should be transformed and transmitted. University educators have had to deal with relatively similar problems and to adapt quickly to the objective COVID-19 epidemiological circumstances. SEEM helped us keeping students engaged during the 2020 and 2021 lockdowns. SEEM encouraged to rethink the classical approaches to lecturing and to assessment. Definitely, sharing SEEM’s values has been ensuring our professional well-being and our students’ health and education-related quality of life.

Keywords:

Interactive teaching methods, Sustainable Educational and Emotional Model (SEEM), social medicine, public health, naval engineering, informatics, COVID-19.