A report on the use of e-learning in the humanities in the Czech Republic, Italy, Lithuania, Poland and Slovakia

ENThe project's main objective was to strengthen the cooperation between 5 partner institutions and increase their internationalization through working out and disseminating new educational tools and exchanging good practices in the area of distance learning. The specific objectives were: promoting the idea of the use of ICTs and open educational resources in education at the higher education level, equipping academic teachers from 5 partner universities with modern didactic tools for students, improving the knowledge of new technologies and interactive tools as educational means, stimulating virtual forms of collaboration and communication. The report compares the distance learning and e-learning activities at universities in European countries before, during the pandemic COVID 19 and the period of the first coronavirus waves had a huge impact on the traditional functioning of universities. The use of e-learning as one of the didactic tools, especially in the case of humanities, even though it was forced by the pandemic COVID 19 and commonly used in lockdowns period, is still a very challenging task, as it is both socially and culturally constructed. However, a contemporary world that is oriented towards fast, dynamic, multimodal, and easily-accessed messages requires openness to interdisciplinarity, which, in this case, means the ability to connect various disciplines and move within them with the use of new technologies. Good practices presented in the report resulting from the introduction of e-learning in the humanities field include developing the skill of expressing one’s thoughts, opinions, and beliefs using creative and innovative tools.This results in the possibility of confronting knowledge recipients from different parts of the world (platforms, discussion panels, and forums to exchange views and experiences and solve problems). The common partners’ project works enabled the development of pragmatic and cultural competence through communication with participants who represented different social and cultural backgrounds and it helped to describe possible solutions which combine e-learning, blended learning, distance learning, and other forms of traditional education. The report presents the results of empirical research conducted at universities in the Czech Republic, Italy, Lithuania, Poland and Slovakia. The aim of the study was to check how it is used and evaluated by various participants in the teaching process, such as university management, higher education experts, academics and students. It was also the intention of the research team to learn about good practices in e-learning implemented at universities, with a particular focus on the humanities. The research was carried out in parallel in five countries, with two universities in each. Each partner carried out research at the university it represents and at another university operating in its country. The study covered the period from January to April 2022. The research was based on a mixed-method plan using qualitative and quantitative research techniques. They were conducted in equal groups of respondents forming the academic communities of individual universities. In total, the study covered the following: 10 universities in five countries; 319 academics who took part in the online survey; 67 teachers who took part in focus group interviews; 1,621 students participated in the online survey; 36 didactic process supervisors participated in in-depth interviews; 18 teaching experts participated in individual in-depth interviews.