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Differential Usage of Learning Management Systems in Chemistry Courses in the Time after COVID-19
Learning management systems play a crucial role in addressing pedagogical challenges imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. The solutions provided by the learning management systems (LMS) facilitated online instructions and helped form a community of learning and support. With the rapid increased usage during the pandemic and the return to face-to-face post-pandemic, an in-depth analysis on lasting changes in students’ engagement and the instructors’ use of the systems during and after the pandemic is needed. This study aims at providing the analysis results on the differential usage of the learning management systems in a chronological time frame and on a course-level-specific aspect. Analysis conducted on the LMS usage data of chemistry courses between Fall 2019 and Fall 2021 suggests unique patterns, depending on the course levels. The extent of students’ interaction with peers and course materials varied for different course levels. The degree of usage of learning management systems by instructors also depended on the course levels. Instructors in lower-level courses (1000 and 2000 level courses) continued to use learning management systems extensively after the pandemic, while instructors in upper-level courses (3000 and 4000 level courses) rebounded to their pre-pandemic level of usage after resuming face-to-face instructions.
■ INTRODUCTION
Learning management system (LMS) is software to deliver, track, and manage training and/or education. The LMS includes a wide range of systems from one for managing educational records to that for delivering and distributing courses over the Internet. 1 Such systems are managed by the administration of educational institutions and facilitate access to the learning content. 2 As pedagogical challenges are addressed through the technological solutions that LMSs can provide, the LMSs accessible via the Internet reflect a paradigm shift and have been adopted rapidly in manly educational institutions. With the outbreak of COVID-19, the demand in the LMS rapidly increased globally, 3 and the global e-learning market share is expected to exceed $370 billion in 2026. 4 Georgia Gwinnett College (GGC) is an open-access public liberal arts college located in Lawrenceville, Gwinnett County, Georgia. GGC was founded in 2006 as the first four-year college founded in Georgia in more than 100 years and the first four-year public college created in the U. S. in the 21st century. 5 Gwinnett County is the second most populous county in the state and is the seventh most ethnically diverse county in the state according to 2021 census data. GGC's student body reflects a similar ethnic diversity, classified as a Hispanic Serving Institution with 25% Hispanic/Latino population, 6,7 and the institution has been a minority majority institution, as demonstrated by the corresponding demographic information. 8 GGC combines student−faculty engagement practices with small class sizes, individual attention, a diverse and inclusive culture, and student mentoring to enhance student success. 5 Most of chemistry courses including lecture−lab combined ones (so-called K courses) adopt a single-instructor model, in which a single set of classmates and a single instructor form a community of learning and support.
Chemistry courses were delivered in person prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. For the K courses, the lecture and lab constituted a section, and the section was run by a single instructor without a teaching assistant. The size of enrollment was capped at 24 students, and the interaction between students and the instructor was maintained as interactive and significant throughout a semester. With the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the modality of instructions was diversified either to a completely online delivery or a hybrid format. The online courses were further varied into synchronous and asynchronous. Later, a certain number of in-person courses or sections were revived. Therefore, there would be four types of course delivery (in-person, hybrid, online synchronous, and online asynchronous) in a semester. 9,10 During the pandemic, there were times when the enrollment for a section was temporarily increased to 28 students, which returned to 24 afterward.
Online delivery inevitably called for changes in specific methods of dissemination of lecture and laboratories. 11,12 Virtual instructions necessitated recording lecture and a portion of laboratory to provide students with lectures and visualized information on laboratories. For asynchronous sections, it was the only method adopted for the course. Consequently, relevant adaptations became crucial in assessments and lab curricula in many courses. 13,14 In Fall 2021, the GGC campus resumed normal onsite operations where most courses returned to in-person delivery modality with limited number of sections offered as hybrid or online (synchronous or asynchronous). As of Fall 2022 semester, among all 89 sections offered in the chemistry department, 20 sections are taught in these modes: nine hybrid, eight online synchronous, and three online asynchronous sections. All of these courses are 1000 level courses (CHEM 1151K, CHEM 1152K, CHEM 1211K, and CHEM 1212K), while the upper-level courses are in a face-to-face mode. The detailed list of courses can be found in the Supporting Information Table S1.
Prior to the pandemic, Brightspace (Desire to Learn; D2L), the LMS employed at GGC, was used primarily for simple purposes such as course communication, assignment collection, and gradebook. D2L uses Blackboard Collaborate for online "virtual classroom" video conferencing. There were phases of varied extent of LMS usage as the transition from completely face-to-face instructions to partially or fully online modes. The partial transition took place in March 2020, 15 and the Summer 2020 semester adopted fully online modality over all chemistry courses. With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the LMS began to play more essential functions. 16,17 The whiteboard and the Breakout Groups features were utilized in delivering real-time lectures and group discussion and problem solving to mimic a typical in-person classroom environment. Assessments including quizzes and exams were administered through the LMS. Recordings of lectures with transcripts were provided on D2L for students to watch either for review or for catch-up at a later time as well. The integrity of the academic evaluation of students' performance was supported by a custom interface for web browsers during the assessments. Respondus LockDown Browser and/or Monitor were adopted for GGC's LMS as a platform compatible with the Brightspace. 9 As it has been more than two years since the pandemic started and the instructions return to face-to-face in the postpandemic time, it would be meaningful to investigate whether the pedagogical changes and adaptations made at the beginning of and during the pandemic persist after the pandemic, in particular, in terms of the utilization of LMSs. Since faculty and student acceptance toward LMSs varies, 18 two specific research questions were proposed to delve in: Research question 1: How does the level of student engagement with course materials and peer students change on LMS before, during, and after the pandemic?
Research question 2: How does the level of instructor utilization of LMS change before, during, and after the pandemic?
Answering these questions will provide the instructors and the broad chemical education community with relevant perspectives on the course-level specific course design and the LMS usage.
■ DATA COLLECTION
An Institutional Review Board (IRB) was submitted to access archival data sets of all students who took chemistry courses between the Fall 2019 semester and Fall 2021 semester at GGC (located in USA). After the IRB was approved, a data request was submitted to the campus LMS administrator. 19 To be specific, each feature was normalized using its maximum and minimum values (see the equation below). The normalized data were then aggregated by semester and course level. The average of the normalized data was then reported and used in the subsequent analyses. The normalization was intended to scale the data to a known range and can improve the accuracy of data analysis for comparison. 20 A further breakdown of sections offered in different modalities (face-to-face, hybrid, online synchronous, and online asynchronous) for each level of the courses is presented in Figure 1. In Fall 2019 before the pandemic, all courses were in a face-to-face mode. In Spring 2020, all sections started from the face-to-face modality but transitioned to online synchronous/asynchronous in March 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak. 15 In Fall 2020 and Spring 2021 semesters, a mix of hybrid and online sections was offered. For 1000 and 2000 level courses, a higher percentage of sections was offered online in Fall 2020 than in Spring 2021. However, the percentage of online sections in the 3000 and 4000 level courses dropped from 50% in Fall 2020 to 14% in Spring 2021. In Fall 2021 when GGC returned to normal operations, only 14% of 1000 level courses were delivered online, and all of the 2000, 3000, and 4000 level courses returned to entirely the face-to-face modality. Quiz Completed and Total Time Spent in Content displayed similar trends. The courses at the 1000 level had the highest number of quizzes completed during the study period. In 1000 level courses, the number of quizzes completed by students and the total amount of time spent in content both increased during the pandemic and plateaued at a higher level after the pandemic in Fall 2021. A similar increase in the number of quizzes completed by students was observed for 2000 level courses during the pandemic from Fall 2019 to Fall 2020 but declined dramatically to a pre-pandemic level in Fall 2021, while no significant changes were observed for 3000 and 4000 level during the study period.
Aside from quizzes, the Number of Assignment Submissions feature provided another perspective on students' commitment to course materials. In 1000, 3000, and 4000 level courses, the number of assignments submitted by students increased during the pandemic and plateaued at a higher level after the pandemic in Fall 2021. In contrast, the number of assignments completed in 2000 level courses dramatically increased during the pandemic from Fall 2019 to Fall 2020, and then, declined to a pre-pandemic level in Fall 2021.
Regardless of various trends in Total Time Spent in Content, Number of Logins To
The System steadily decreased during the study period for all chemistry courses. Across various levels of courses, 3000 and 4000 level courses had the highest average number of logins to the LMS system.
Discussion Post Created feature was used to investigate how students interact with each other. The usage of discussion tools on LMS was close to zero before the pandemic in Fall 2019. In all chemistry courses, Discussion Post Created usage slightly increased during the pandemic (Spring 2020 to Spring 2021) and dropped back to a pre-pandemic level in Fall 2021. The continuing underutilization of discussion tools on the LMS revealed that students were not actively engaged with peer students via LMSs. Lastly, in order to examine how instructors used LMS preand post-pandemic, Content Required feature was plotted in Figure 2. Even though 2000 level courses displayed the highest average usage during the study period, the usage in both 1000 and 2000 level courses significantly increased during the pandemic (Spring 2020 to Spring 2021) and persisted after the pandemic (Fall 2021). However, 3000 and 4000 level courses returned to similar levels of usage after the pandemic in Fall 2021. This indicates that instructors in all chemistry courses adapted to the changes during the pandemic and utilized LMS more to support the teaching. The instructors in 1000 and 2000 level courses continued to utilize LMS at a higher level even after the pandemic while those of 3000 and 4000 level courses returned to their pre-pandemic level of usage in Fall 2021.
A total of four features (Quiz Completed, Number of Assignment Submissions, Total Time Spent in Content, and Number of Logins
To The System) were used to assess students' engagement with course materials. 23−26 Overall, students were more engaged with course materials in 1000 level courses, even after the pandemic. After resuming in-person instructions, the chemistry department kept a few online sections of 1000 level courses for students enrolled in the online Information Technology degree at GGC, which may lead to the higher-level engagement after the pandemic. Students in 2000 level courses were more active during the pandemic, but their activities soon returned to the pre-pandemic level in Fall 2021. Lastly, students' commitment in 3000 and 4000 level courses did not change much during and after the pandemic.
The students' interaction with peer students on the LMS (evaluated by Discussion Post Created) slightly increased during the pandemic and dropped to close to zero after in-person and hybrid courses resumed, which is consistent with other studies. 27−29 Even during the pandemic, instructors may choose to use real-time tools, such as Breakout Groups during online class meetings for interactions among peer students.
The in-person discussion took place in classrooms and laboratories may have completely replaced the discussion tools on the LMS after the pandemic. The instructors in lower-level courses continued to use the LMS after the pandemic as extensively as during the pandemic, while those in upper-level courses returned to their prepandemic level of usage in Fall 2021. Many instructors, especially in 1000 and 2000 level courses, prepared prerecorded videos for students during the pandemic, 10 and they may have chosen to continue to offer these resources after the pandemic. However, the instructors for 3000 and 4000 level courses in the chemistry department rotate off after two semesters of teaching the same course, which could be the factor that leads to the difference in the usage patterns. The instructors in more recent semesters may not have the need to prepare prerecorded videos, therefore, the usage of Content Required feature on the LMS fell down to pre-pandemic level.
COVID-19 pandemic has certainly promoted distance learning in higher education. During the pandemic, a huge amount of data was generated from various online teaching/ learning tools. Our study takes advantage of these big data in a way that would benefit instructors, departments, and institutions. 30,31 For individual instructors, we provide a new perspective to track and adjust the LMS usage in their course design throughout the semester. At the departmental level, new teaching/learning tools can be customized and adopted based on aggregated students' engagement data from LMSs. At the institutional level, frequent reviews of LMS usage data can assist the administration to make data-driven decisions such as increasing the number of sections in a specific modality and expanding certain academic programs in response to the rapidly growing demands in online education. It is possible that LMS log data alone did not capture every tool that instructors used to facilitate teaching during and after the pandemic. Still, as the primary platforms to communicate with students, LMSs provide a macroscopic picture of how the pandemic has changed chemical education.
■ CONCLUSIONS
This study analyzed the log data from LMS to investigate the evolution of LMS usage before, during, and after the pandemic. The first research question was "Do students engage with course materials and peer students on LMS differently before, during, and after the pandemic?" Students were not active in interacting with peer students on the LMS throughout the study period. In terms of engagement with the course materials, students all display unique patterns in different levels of courses. Students were more engaged with course materials in 1000 level courses during the pandemic, and that change carried over even after the pandemic. For 2000 level courses, students were more active during the pandemic but soon receded to pre-pandemic level in Fall 2021. For the 3000 and 4000 level courses, student engagement with course materials remained at almost the same level during and after the pandemic.
The second research question was "Do instructors utilize LMS differently after the pandemic?" Lasting change was observed for instructors in lower-level courses (1000 and 2000 level courses). They continued to use LMS extensively after the pandemic. In contrast, instructors in upper-level courses (3000 and 4000 level courses) rebounded to their prepandemic level of usage after resuming the face-to-face instructions.
The findings can be further utilized to customize the levelspecific course design and facilitate student engagement through the optimal use of LMSs, eventually to ensure enhanced students' learning experiences.
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Fostering a dual vision: lessons learned in developing a collaborative joint MSW program
ABSTRACT From a longitudinal perspective, three successive directors of a Joint Master of Social Work program analyzed the process and strategies used in gaining Council on Social Work Education candidacy status and accreditation. Joint MSW programs are partnerships combining the resources of two or more universities to conduct one collaborative program. A literature review indicated that primary advantages for universities to create joint programs include innovative opportunity, social justice, the value of collaboration over competition, and cost savings for faculty lines. The process of building and negotiating a bi-university infrastructure, in addition to developing a new program, has many hidden complexities. Evidence-Based Management was a practical approach utilized during program development. The benefits and drawbacks of establishing a Joint MSW program are considered and can be used as a guide to determine if starting a joint program is warranted. Recommendations for how to establish a joint program are discussed along with the process of attaining accreditation. Key learnings during the process included developing fruitful collaborations, navigating value differences, understanding the importance of advocacy, assessing hidden costs, and managing necessary resource allocations. Given contemporary fiscal pressures within universities, it is important that joint programs develop a road map plan.
Introduction
The Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) website indicates that as of July 2022, there were 313 accredited MSW programs in the USA (Council on Social Work Education, 2022a, 2022c). In contrast, it is estimated that historically there were 9 collaborative or joint MSW programs nationally before the establishment of the joint MSW Program in the case study discussed in this paper (Council on Social Work Education, 2022a, 2022b). This number was estimated by analyzing CSWE's list of accredited and formerly accredited MSW programs on CSWE's website (Council on Social Work Education, 2022a, 2022c). Since 2019, five collaborative programs have CONTACT Steven Diane Mahasin.salehInstitute for Graduate Studies, PO Box 200592, Adam Carter, Zone 70, Jamie Boyer, Doha, Qatar closed, and all have or are in the process of reopening as separate MSW programs. As of July 2022, only four active collaborative MSW programs are in operation (Council on Social Work Education, 2022a). Each program varies in structure, student demographics, and degree of collaboration. The rationale for developing each program differs as well. Given the current number of active collaboratives, this is a timely analysis.
Defining joint masters' programs
Although the terms joint degree program and dual degree program have at times been used interchangeably, there is a difference between the two. A dual degree program requires students to complete two separate programs at one or more universities. In contrast, a joint degree program is for a single degree with one curriculum designed and offered collaboratively by two or more universities. Various definitions of joint programs exist. In a report for the European Consortium of Accreditation, Aerden and Reczulska (2013) defined joint programs as those which are developed and implemented jointly by two or more institutions. These programs follow the legal requirements of the corresponding higher education systems. Helms (2014), along with the American Council on Education, defined joint programs as degree programs designed and delivered by two or more partner institutions in different countries where a student receives a single degree endorsed by each institution.
The idea of dual/joint collaboration among educational institutions is not new. Other disciplines such as nursing education have engaged in dual admission partnerships for some time. For example, students seeking a degree in nursing may be dually enrolled in an associate degree in nursing programs while concurrently earning hours toward a Bachelor's of Science degree in Nursing (RN-to-BSN) (Smith, 2018).
In social work academia, joint programs also are referred to as 'combined' BSW/MSW programs or MSW/Ph. D. programs. For the purpose of this paper, a joint program is defined as a joint degree program located within two (or three) universities rather than separate degree programs within the same institution (Brandy & Balraj, 2003). It should be noted that the CSWE also refers to these types of joint social work programs as collaborative programs. For the purpose of this paper, the definition of a joint or collaborative program is when universities are cooperatively involved in planning, developing, publicizing, and implementing one educational program at the Master's level in the field of Social Work.
Advantages and challenges in developing joint social work programs
Two key studies have substantial implications for building joint social work programs. Johnson (1990) interviewed administrators in nine BSW collaboratives to determine the significance of trends in development. Advantages for the programs included pooling resources and cost savings that enable small programs to survive. Disadvantages included the complexity of program administration and the difficulty with holding all faculty accountable for quality programming. Johnson (1990) concluded that cooperation and planning are essential and that it is possible to minimize the challenges and build strong joint programs.
Notably, twenty-five year passed before Wang (2015) published a qualitative study on joint MSW programs after interviewing administrators in six collaboratives. Wang found that these programs often sprang up from established BSW programs and served rural or less populated areas. The researcher reported that joint programs also added 'bench depth' to existing programs by increasing the variety of faculty teaching in the program. Nicola Cox identified were isolation between programs and the complexity of daily operations. Many of the same advantages and challenges are present for both BSW and MSW collaboratives. Wang noted that the idea of a collaborative based on Johnson's (1990) study did not result in a proliferation of collaboratives and that there is little empirical evidence about collaboratives and administrators who might want to develop one.
Other key considerations identified in the literature for universities to develop joint programs included averting a financial crisis, the enticement of cost savings when sharing faculty lines, increasing the number of MSWs to serve under-resourced groups in a geographic region, improving access to graduate education for racial minority persons in Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU), and innovation and growth (Crowell & McCarragher, 2007;Jewett, 1998;Moore, n.d.). Since little is known about joint MSW collaboratives, Wang (2015) recommended conducting in-depth program analyses.
Case background
The universities analyzed in this investigation are located in a Southern State and have a history of active cooperation between their BSW programs. The local context is diverse and crosses rural, mid-size, and large metropolitan areas. The two universities are very close in proximity (about 2 miles), and one university is recognized as a teaching university with approximately 17,000 students. The other institution is classified as a research university, with over 40,000 students enrolled. At the time, University B's Office of Diversity and Inclusion A, a teaching university, was designated as a Hispanic Serving Institution, and recently University B's Office of Diversity and Inclusion B became both a research university and a Hispanic Serving Institution. Both Universities have long-standing BSW programs, and neither University B's Office of Diversity and Inclusion has a Social Work Ph. D. Program.
Given the BSW programs' 10 minutes across town proximity, students were often placed at the same field agencies, held joint field agency training, and the same community stakeholders served on each program's advisory councils. The BSW programs had a long track record of collaboration. Based upon data from two informal needs assessments and a dearth of graduate programs in the immediate area, establishing an MSW program seemed to be a logical next step. Both universities agreed they did not have the resources to start an individual program, and thus co-designing and pooling resources made fiscal sense.
Due to cooperation over time, the two universities also had similar academic calendars, making collaboration much more feasible. One of the two university chancellors was a champion for establishing a joint program due to her past experience at another university. One dean who worked as a BSW social work faculty suggested the idea of starting a joint MSW program. Thus, there was strong support from the upper administration. University B's Office of Diversity and Inclusion B's BSW program was originally located in another department. The chair of that department presented a joint program proposal for consideration that was approved by the Dean and upper administration. After that, a bi-university steering committee was established. The committee began initial planning, and a subcommittee developed and finalized a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU). An MSW program consultant, who later became the Founding Program Director and is the first author of this paper, was hired to develop course descriptions and seek both universities' new program curriculum approvals. The MOU stated that the program directorship would rotate approximately every four year between the universities.
Theoretical framework and application
Reviewing the limited literature describing the development of joint MSW programs, Candace Quinn (2014) utilized group work theory to guide their joint program development. They drew from Tuckman's (1965) stages of group work, characterizing their development as forming, storming, norming, and performing. Their conclusions included the importance of communication, willingness to embrace change, and having an ethic valuing new program development. They also noted the importance of developing a program identity. Team mentality, formal and informal communication, and the use of cutting-edge technology for distance learning were also emphasized. Tuckman's framework appears to apply more to internal departmental level program development. Understandably, a program would utilize the infrastructure, policies, and procedures already in place in a department to expand to the Master's level.
Nevertheless, there is a need to encompass and explain the multiple layers of systems change necessary to create a joint MSW program across two departments that are nested within two colleges and two universities. Evidence-Based Management (EBMgt) theory is a framework (Barends & Rousseau, 2018;Pfeffer & Sutton, 2006) that was found useful in explaining the specific efforts, strategies, and processes involved in building such a program. As the founding program director, the first author utilized EBMgt theory to establish and administer the Joint Master of Social Work (JMSW) program. EBMgt was borrowed from Evidence-Based Practice (EBP) and is defined as utilizing a 'combination of critical thinking, and the best available evidence' in decision making, which includes: a) scientific evidence and is traditionally defined as 'scientific research' outcomes; b) experiential evidence also known as practice experience and wisdom of practitioners; c) organizational evidence or information and data from the organization, and; d) stakeholder evidence including organizational values and stakeholders' concerns (see Figure 1) (Barends & Rousseau, 2018;Pfeffer & Sutton, 2006).
It is important to note that there is a lack of research about using evidence-based management in social work organizations. Briggs and McBeath (2009) presented a case study description about using EBMgt in a social service agency to improve program performance. The authors stated that utilization of EBMgt contributed to positive gains, including tripling the number of employees and obtaining licensure of a group home. They suggest further research due to barriers in implementing EBMgt. Nursing management scholars also noted that evidence-based nursing management is in emerging stages and should be taught in nursing programs (Shingler-Nace & Gonzalez, 2017). Further literature searches revealed no other articles to date focusing on the use of EBMgt strategies in developing and administering social work education programs. Therefore, this case study description and application of aspects of EBMgt provides application and insight into EBMgt.
Utilizing EBMgt as a theory-based strategy was beneficial because, throughout program development, each successive program director (the authors of this article) was able to provide evidence and rationale for decisions, and these decisions served as an accountability framework. Another aspect of this framework is the importance of considering the focus of the program curriculum based on the community context. For instance, (Osei-Hwedie et al., 2006) emphasized the importance of developing social work programs that are based on the local context and community needs. The evidencebased method used in developing this program prevented pitfalls, including myopic program leadership (Pfeffer & Sutton, 2006).
Scientific evidence and analytical benchmarking strategy
In addition to the field of management (Barends & Rousseau, 2018), a shortage of research about the administration of programs exists in social work education. The program directors consulted social work program literature, but the evidence was sometimes outdated (for example, studies published prior to development of CSWE's Educational Policies and Standards (EPAS). Sometimes the best available scientific evidence was at odds; for instance, there was contradictory evidence from a teaching university in contrast to a research university. Therefore, a critical question to answer became, 'What else is considered scientific evidence in the case of developing a joint master's program?' The founding program director utilized current social work education evidence by creating and undertaking a systematic benchmarking strategy. This began with (Barends & Rousseau, 2018).
a comparative analysis of information and data (e.g.policies, procedures, curriculum) from both JMSW's BSW Programs. Then the director selected MSW programs within a specific geographic proximity of the JMSW program and an MSW program under establishment within the same state but much farther away. As needed, she examined information from other large state universities. The director also selected several topranked/well-known MSW programs in the USA (that shared some characteristics of the JMSW program or a similar concentration).
CSWE requires that social work programs publicly make certain aspects of their program information, such as mission statements, student admissions processes, course of study plans (Vliek et al., 2016). As a result, certain information (i.e.handbooks, admissions, field information) was typically available. Benchmarking entailed examining and systematically analyzing relevant organizational evidence/information from multiple programs to assess frequent standard practices. This strategy helped answer administrative questions such as, 'What are MSW admissions standards in the geographic area?'
Best available experiential evidence
Each program director (the authors of this paper) had the experience of working in other MSW Programs. The founding director previously contributed to establishing an MSW program overseas. The directors also drew upon the expertise and administrative wisdom of the BSW program directors. Care was taken not to transpose the BSW model onto the JMSW Program because BSW education is pedagogically and substantively different from MSW education. Evidence-based managers do not rely solely upon their previous experiences while developing and administering a master's program. This was a contributing factor to program success.
Administrative wisdom was also gained by navigating both university systems during the development of the program. The first program director passed along her experience to the second and the second director to the third. The third program director also served as the first field director and had gained insight from that perspective. One university had multiple changes in leadership at the college level, which added to the complexity of operations and negotiations. At times there were personnel vacancies at the universities that were not announced, and the openings were not filled immediately, which impacted the functioning of the JMSW program. Consequently, each program director gained university administrative wisdom by navigating through unexpected developments in a changing environment.
Best available organizational evidence
Since organizational evidence was gathered from two universities, it took longer to find and obtain it. Each successive program director drew upon evidence including but not limited to university data and statistics, university and college policy and procedures. Furthermore, the best organizational evidence and policies and procedures at each institution also differed. Sometimes this involved gathering data from other graduate programs within either university to identify which programs were most successful in implementing specific program processes. Occasionally, university data, such as enrollment, drove one university's standards, which impacted the JMSW program recruitment strategies. Also, at times, university evidence and policies diverged from what was needed for CSWE candidacy status. Therefore, educating upper-level administrators about the accreditation standards, including the faculty-to-student ratio, became a necessary and ongoing endeavor for each program director.
Organizational and stakeholder values and concerns
The organizational values and stakeholders' concerns seemed to be where differences emerged. The relational skills of the administrative team were needed to broker negotiations between the universities and stakeholders who held opposing views. In some cases, shuttle diplomacy between universities was necessary due to university administrators' busy schedules to secure upper management approval. Some of the program elements had to be established in cooperation with both universities, requiring each program director to organize many scheduled and ad hoc meetings. Each of these elements took extra time for a program director and other personnel because of the bi-university partnership. For example, after an initial proposal at the program level before the first semester roll out, both universities agreed after long e-mail and in-person deliberations upon a fair solution of holding classes one day a week at each campus. Consensus building in any collaboration can be a lengthy and tedious process (Reilly & Peterson, 1997). The program directors found three helpful negotiation strategies. These included emphasizing partners' overall common mission, focusing on the need for timely decisions, and encouraging the possibility of reevaluating decisions or direction in the future as needed.
Despite utilizing EBMgt in program development, the process was often not linear, straightforward, easy, or seamless. The program directors found that the development was complex and challenging. Each university had its own wellestablished infrastructure. Therefore, negotiation was intertwined with each aspect of the EBMgt decision-making process. Visually this could be depicted by superimposing the negotiation process (on the right) in Figure 2 within each quadrant of the EBMgt process from Figure 1. Working with two partners with different policy and procedure infrastructures and values took additional discussion and time. The dual vision that emerged during these discussions led to finding a middle way forward. This sometimes involved one university taking the lead and sometimes it involved compromise. A team that was committed to making the partnership work was fundamental to the joint program's success.
Phases and analysis of program development
The following discussion identifies the phases and analysis in the program's development along with lessons learned along the way. Some of the main elements presented include a discussion of department infrastructure development across both universities and the strategy used to garner the needed structure. Examination of the two university infrastructures and the steps taken to build the JMSW infrastructure within the context of the two universities is also dissected. Key highlights from the phases of program development are presented to provide insights into the overall time frame and workload. The authors begin by discussing the evidence-based process of selecting the program's concentration, given that this was a critical program decision that was made early on and set the entire foundation for the program's curriculum.
Phase 1 -curriculum infrastructure-program concentration
One of the early decisions that needed to be made was the type of program concentration. Utilizing evidence-based decision-making, the founding program director provided a solid rationale for an Advanced Generalist Practice (AGP) concentration/ specialization (Roy & Vecchiolla, 2004;Vecchiolla et al., 2001). In addition to analyzing both BSW programs, the best available evidence from other programs, examining the local context, and utilizing previous experience, the founding director also spoke to BSW faculty and administrators. Administrators and stakeholders at both universities unanimously accepted the director's proposal of the AGP concentration. Additional positive feedback and confirmation about this evidence-based decision were provided in the CSWE Commissioner's First Benchmark Visit Report. The Commissioner cited the AGP concentration as the best fit for the JMSW program within the regional context. The program specialization is a core component of the program's identity, which fit a niche in the local context of being juxtaposed between both urban and rural environments.
Phase 2 -JMSW timeline-highlights year 1-illustrating workload
Program development highlights of the JMSW program timeline are provided in Table 1. Please note that it does not include prior program planning during Fall 2016. While not exhaustive, it gives a sense of the workload and some of the key steps taken, especially the heavy workload of the first year through to achieving CSWE accreditation. The authors chose not to include the specific CSWE Commission on Accreditation (COA) Candidacy Timeline that the program entered under because CSWE has changed some of the One of the early lessons learned during the first year was that an oversight had been the 'uneven' hiring, meaning that the universities did not bring the program director and field director on board at the same time. Both the State Board of Higher Education and the regional accrediting body were backlogged in workload. However, both approvals were received in time to begin the program.
Fall year 1
The department chair position at University B's Office of Diversity and Inclusion B was not filled until August of the first year, and the appointment was an interim chair from within the university from another department. While the chair who joined in August of the first year was not from the social work professional field, she was familiar with University B's Office of Diversity and Inclusion B's processes and procedures, which was helpful. Due to the state hiring freeze, the administrative coordinator position at University B's Office of Diversity and Inclusion B was not filled until October of year 1. Both of these personnel vacancies increased the founding director's workload. At the same time, the BSW program at University B's Office of Diversity and Inclusion B was undergoing CSWE reaffirmation. The new JMSW field director at University B's Office of Diversity and Inclusion A was hired, along with an associate professor at University B's Office of Diversity and Inclusion B in the Fall of the first year. Filling the department chair at University B's Office of Diversity and Inclusion B and the JMSW personnel positions made it possible to roll out the program with its first cohort of generalist students. In the fall semester of year 1, the second-year syllabi and field education manual were finalized.
Spring year 2
The First Benchmark Site Visit was very successful, and the Commissioner's main recommendation was that the program director and field director receive additional course releases. The JMSW founding program director's request to the dean to return to faculty after a year and a half was fully supported. Deans at both universities recognized the extra work the founding program director had undertaken, especially given the personnel vacancies. Recommendations from subsequent Commissioner site visits related to enhancing the administrative structure are discussed in the administrative infrastructure section.
Phase 3 -university infrastructure and creating program infrastructure
Metaphorically speaking, establishing a joint program is like trying to physically combine two buildings across many differences. At the level of relational values and concerns, it was like blending two different families. The initial steering committee decided that the highest standard would be followed in terms of any policy and procedure, for example, GPA for admissions. Sometimes policies were aligned while other times not, so either one policy had to be chosen or the other or a new policy created. In terms of Student Services, such as the recreation center or students' counseling services, the students were required to access their 'home' university services.
During the Spring and Summer of the first year, many elements were created, including but not limited to a joint program admissions application and process, a joint program parking pass, a handbook, a program website, and a shadow registration system. Collaboration was required on many fronts. For example, the JMSW director and BSW program director from University B's Office of Diversity and Inclusion A worked with the corresponding admissions departments at both universities to develop and pilot a joint registration process. Applicants were randomly assigned to one university or the other, and then they applied through a centralized statewide admissions portal for all state universities. Students were assigned a 'home institution' upon admission to the program. An exception to the random assignment was made for university employees who qualified for their institution's scholarship. The assignment was created to ensure that student numbers were equitable and enabled revenue sharing between the two Universities. While there was potential for challenges with the random assignment or student perceptions about the reputation of universities, everything went smoothly. It is helpful to note that these could be possible issues that other universities might face.
To ensure co-ownership in cohort selection, everyone reviewed the applications when JMSW faculty came on board. The joint parking pass was considered a major milestone after Parking Services personnel at both universities collaborated. These collaborations involved setting aside old procedures to creatively establish new ones. Building the JMSW infrastructure was an iterative process. Extra planning and coordinating was an ongoing endeavor to improve the ease of operations and align with university process modifications or even personnel changes. The program directors and later the chairs were actively involved with each other across systems to continue building and implementing changes and improvements.
One of the challenges during the first- year rollout was that there was no dedicated JMSW online learning platform. Therefore, students had to log in to each university's online learning platform to access their classes. Creating a seamless interface for the online learning system across two universities took several years. The second program director was persistent in locating a key person at University B's Office of Diversity and Inclusion B who brainstormed an innovative solution to create the single login. Often the authors found that simply conducting informal in-person meetings with the key persons, rather than e-mails and large meetings, was the formula for successful collaboration.
practice by continuing to gain further self-awareness about values, bias, and privilege. When working at another university, the founding director and colleagues had implemented diversity training and evaluation for students (Saleh et al., 2011). Due to the findings from that research and based upon her experience teaching in the BSW program and JMSW process evaluation student feedback, she proposed that all JMSW faculty and students receive training from University B's Office of Diversity and Inclusion. The BSW and JMSW faculty embraced the opportunity. The field director, who later became the third program director, was highly committed to diversity education and led a crossuniversity faculty collaboration in this area (Colvin et al., 2020). This commitment led to the program director seeking out and securing a grant for diversity simulation equipment to train students in developing culturally competent practice skills using simulated instruction.
Discussion
This article fills a void in the literature by synergistically combining two key understudied areas, use of Evidence-Based Management and decision-making, and a case study illustrating the process of establishing a Joint Master's of Social Work program. The case study description and approach is timely given that limited literature is available (Patton & Applebaum, 2003). One of the purposes of this review is to provide information to help faculty and administrators decide if starting a joint program is feasible and logical in their settings. While it would have been impossible to describe and examine every aspect of program development in this paper, key development components were analyzed, and significant findings were presented. In this case, Evidence-Based Management was an instrumental and solid approach to develop the program at all levels. This theoretical approach supported Wang's (2015) observation that collaborative social work programs require increased scientific inquiry into decision-making in order to strengthen them.
The results showed the extensive nature of building a JMSW infrastructure in two university settings at all levels. In support of these findings, Moore (n.d.), in his unpublished history of the Joint Program in North Carolina, acknowledges that coordinating with both universities on developing all elements (such as registrations, bookstores, libraries, orientation procedures) are monumental challenges. This laborintensive process was also iterative, given the ever-changing nature of universities and personnel. The program and department administrative infrastructure required for expansion was another key finding in this case. The need to further develop program administrative infrastructure at both universities was resolved through ingenuity and advocacy to upper-level administrators. The fuel for the advocacy was the CSWE Commissioner site visit recommendations.
Another finding is that the Joint MSW Program Director role required dual vision in every consideration and endeavor to build co-ownership and consensus. A hidden cost consists of the extra time directors spend building and administering programs. Developing the JMSW program was groundbreaking and innovative, but it was also complex and multidimensional. Establishing any new program takes more time and work, and the workload for developing a bi-university program is arduous. The program directors had the opportunity to be deeply involved on multiple levels in two universities (infrastructures), which is not typical for program directors in existing or new programs at one university. Various university administrators remarked they noticed the joint program directors' extra work. Program directors must utilize systems-level thinking, track multiple tasks, and utilize a skill set of attention to the large picture and the small details.
Recommendations
Programs wanting to develop a joint MSW program need to determine if the JMSW model is a good fit and realistic given the time commitments and phases involved in the development process. In pondering the goodness of fit, consider the following aspects.
Needs assessment, establishing a logical purpose, and inclusion in college strategic plan
As with any new program, a needs assessment should be undertaken with prospective students and community stakeholders. Establishing a clear and logical purpose for the collaboration beyond cost-sharing is critical. Including JMSW or MSW development plans in the department and college's strategic plans would be an initial step to ensure BSW faculty and the college's leadership start up and ongoing support. Given the dynamic process of program development and maintenance, active steering committees and councils are fundamental to working together at all levels. Infrastructure is critical to sustainability. Wang (2015) emphasized the need to educate administrators about the unique aspects of collaboratives. Universities are not necessarily in the habit of developing additional infrastructures to accommodate new programs.
Assess the existing social work programs' infrastructure and staffing
Based upon this case analysis, adequate social work personnel and resources should be established from the beginning. This includes realistically assessing the structure of both social work programs and how they blend and support each other. In the case of the JMSW program, separate social work departments were required to ensure the future success of the JMSW Program. Sufficient and even robust faculty and administrative staffing of the BSW programs is recommended, especially given that social work literature states that BSW resources are sometimes inadvertently rerouted to develop new MSW programs (Zeiger et al., 2005). While assessing the BSW faculty and administrative capacity and bandwidth, it is helpful to note when BSW programs are undertaking accreditation reaffirmation in relation to developing a joint MSW program.
Planning-logic model
An evidence-based step includes consulting research about University B's Office of Diversity and Inclusion Joint Programs (Wang, 2015), given recent university strategies to cut costs. A critical recommendation for the JMSW planning stages and proposal includes developing a program logic model to identify and justify the resources needed (LeCroy, 2018;Openshaw et al., 2011). The logic model can serve as a guide and advocacy tool to ensure sufficient resources are granted for program development. This includes a realistic timeline for program development, including but not limited to CSWE benchmark development within the context of the program director and faculty workload. In the long run, the logic model can be updated and revised for program evaluation purposes and additional strategic planning (Greenfield et al., 2006). Selecting a curriculum concentration(s) that fits the contextual needs and program size can increase program sustainability and stakeholder support.
Cultivating collaborations
Several key points are recommended for joint program directors to cultivate collaborations, navigate value differences, and advocate for new joint programs. First, recognize the importance of relationships, whether through small group meetings or in-person visits. The authors found that for the program's success, relationships must be reciprocal and persist over time. In this case, the directors took the opportunity to cultivate relationships across campuses. Expressing appreciation for colleagues' efforts contributed to positive collaborations. It is important to find allies within universities that want the program to succeed. Second, utilize dynamic systems thinking and analysis to proactively think and take action on multiple levels. An iterative dialogue process is needed where micro and macro development intertwine and co-occur. Third, there must be ongoing advocacy by the program's leadership to upper-level university administration officials about the program's needs. This includes continuous efforts to educate upper administrators about CSWE regulations and requirements. It should be kept in mind that the Commissioner's Site visits may serve as a helpful tool in the education and advocacy process.
Other lessons learned-timeline and workload
Other suggestions include establishing a longer launch period with additional planning and including 'even hiring' so that the program director and the field director begin simultaneously. It is helpful to plan for the CSWE Benchmark process in advance, including the related costs associated with accreditation. The workload of establishing a new 'joint' program across two universities must be considered. Universities need to give workload credit for extra time spent developing a new program and infrastructure. In that vein, course release for the program leadership should be sought and granted. It is helpful for university-level administrators to understand that building a joint program does not entail merely expanding a BSW program. It requires an intensive commitment of time and energy, and the CSWE Candidacy process and documentation time considerations need to be fully grasped.
Conclusion
This paper explored and analyzed the establishment of a Joint MSW program and adds to the literature about joint social work programs. It provides a case study of program development and could also be useful in administration and management courses in social work education as a case example of complex program development. The analysis presented the intricacies of program development within two university systems, including examples of Evidence-Based Management as a theoretical decision-making tool that was instrumental in program establishment. The evidence-based management model has the potential for broader use, not only for academic program development, but also for social work program administration and management in communities. Finding research evidence to answer program development questions was a practical method to develop the program. Highlights from the program development timeline were presented along with an analysis of program infrastructure development and information about faculty standards and student feedback. Ongoing evaluation and quality improvement were utilized, which is vital for any program.
It is necessary to bear in mind that only four Collaborative MSW programs in the USA are currently operating. In contrast, it is estimated that 10 MSW Collaboratives have existed historically (Council on Social Work Education, 2022a, 2022b). Although the purpose of this paper was not to analyze why collaborative MSW programs have closed, it appears that Joint MSW programs have served as stepping stones or springboards that led to individual programs opening up separately at their own institutions rather than as programs that are necessarily sustainable over time. While some collaborations have lasted for many year and have successfully graduated many social work student cohorts (Greater Rochester
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Funding
Open Access funding provided by the Qatar National Library
Figure 2 .
Figure 2. Joint MSW program evidence-based decision-making negotiation process within the context of EBMgt.
Collaborative (GRC) MSW Program, 2019; St. Cathy University, 2018) it appears that others have served a purpose of facilitating program establishment and launch. Future research about social work collaborations, whether open or closed, is warranted to gather additional insights about joint program development, operations, process, and outcomes. This type of evidence may further assist social work administrators and university personnel in determining if developing a joint social work program would be a realistic endeavor in their context.
Mahasin
Saleh is an Curtis Austin Professor in the MSW Program in the School of Social Sciences and Humanities at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies in Qatar. Currently, she is in her second term serving as a member of the Global Commission on Social Work Education for the Council of Social Work Education (USA). Candace Hill is an Curtis Austin Professor, the Director of the DSW Program, and the Coordinator of the Gerontology Certificate Program in the College of Social Work at the University B's Office of Diversity and Inclusion of Tennessee at Knoxville, USA. Mr. Luis Jake is an Curtis Austin Professor and Chair of Undergraduate Programs in the School of Behavioral Health and Human Services a the University B's Office of Diversity and Inclusion of North Carolina Texas at Dallas, USA.
Table 1 .
(Continued). Namely, the JMSW program was under the requirement that only Generalist (Foundation) students could be admitted during the program's first year. Advanced standing students were only able to join beginning in year 2 of program development. Some of the key highlights included the CSWE Candidacy Benchmark document preparation process. There were real concerns about state hiring freezes and the potential loss of the JMSW faculty lines. Therefore, the JMSW founding program director pursued completing the benchmark documents in record time, spending many extra hours producing what CSWE commented on as a high-quality benchmark document. This was not typical of a usual faculty program director's workload, even for new program development. At the same time, personnel searches were underway for the program field director, a JMSW faculty member, a BSW faculty member, and one department chair. During January through August of the first year, the program director consulted with University B's Office of Diversity and Inclusion B's Curtis Austin as needed and with University B's Office of Diversity and Inclusion A's BSW program director.
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The Perceptions, Motivations, and Attitudes of English Undergraduate Students Regarding the Use of Social Media
Recently, the utilization of social media among higher students has become increasingly prominent. Most studies regarding this phenomenon suggested that its updated insights are further required for gathering essential information. In this regard, as English undergraduate students are known as social media users thus, a study on how they utilize social media needs to be conducted. This study is a descriptive quantitative study describing the perception, motivation, and attitude of English undergraduate students towards social media usage. Involving 186 participants, this study employed close-ended questions to obtain the information. The data were analyzed statistically by using Interval conversion. The findings shows that (1) the majority of English undergraduate students had positive perceptions toward the use of social media in two domains: perceived usefulness and ease, (2) there are five motivations in using social media namely entertainment, personal utility, information seeking, convenience, and altruism, (3) the students shows positive attitude towards the use of social media since it enables them to communicate with their professors and peers successfully. To sum up, the result of the research shows that the social media usage has a role to impact English undergraduate students’ perception, motivation, and attitude toward their learning process.
INTRODUCTION
For learners, technology becomes a component of the learning process. Numerous sophisticated technologies have emerged as tools or apps that allow learners to collaboratively create, generate, and contribute knowledge in the areas of information exchange, exploration, and ideas (Sumuer, 2018). Furthermore, digital media technology plays an increasingly crucial part in teenage people's friendship and identity development, as well as online peer communication (Davis, 2012). Meanwhile, social networking has become a common international trend that has spread to practically every corner of the globe, and the internet is growing increasingly influential (Kaya & Bicen, 2016;Wu, 2015). As a result of technological advancements, the internet has evolved into a digital network that connects individuals all over the world. The term "social media" refers to a set of internet-based software that can be used to create social networking sites, social bookmarking, sharing tools, social citation tools, blogging and microblogging tools, virtual worlds, e-conferencing presentations, audio and video tools, e-project management tools, and research and writing with collaboration tools (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010;Lee et al., 2016;Nwangwa et al., 2014;Selwyn and Stirling, 2016). As known that social media is a social network in which the medium has a role in the education system. The applications give instructional materials and learning management systems to students, especially those in higher education, using social media for interactive sharing of information with personal networks (Memmi, 2015). Several studies reported that social media as a part of technology in their learning process in which it seems to furnish an efficient media to gather insights within interactive opportunities to increase the students' potential (Dabbagh and Kitsantas, 2012;Dhanya, 2016;Talaue et al.,2018;Mushtaq and Benraghda, 2018). A study under education services company of Babson Survey Research Group and Pearson Learning Solution found that social media used by higher education in the learning process has grown 21% from 2012 to 2013 in the United States (Seaman & Tinti-Kane, 2013). A study also reported that social media had penetrated the lives of many young adults, the social media usage of American adults aged 18-29 years soared from 12% to 90% (Perrin, 2015).
The development of social networks has commonly been used by many institutions through social media usage for the learning management system (Al-Deen & Hendricks, 2011;Sloan & Quan-Haase, 2017). In terms of application, the researcher expands the understanding of the use of technology in academic achievement, particularly in the use of social media in English teaching programs. Furthermore, the researcher may employ these findings to guide future researchers in collecting data on social media for similar studies. Technology has the effect of raising student attention and involvement in order to promote information transmission (Yaros, 2012). In this sense, social media has evolved into a technology with a wide range of online activities. Social media includes social networking sites, microblogs, blogs, chat platforms, open-source mapping, and photo and video sharing, among other things (Gastelum & Whattam, 2013). To put it another way, social media offers a wide range of media applications that can clearly be used to mediate social network activities. In a more detailed context, YouTube has typically been seen as a beneficial learning resource for young learners. Studies have shown that utilizing YouTube to improve young learners' English abilities has a beneficial influence.
Social media is considered as teaching and learning tool through numerous activities, in accordance with the studies of phenomenon about social media utilization in higher students (Ariantini et al., 2021). However, several experts and researchers are still concerned about YouTube's shortcomings and risks as a learning resource for teaching English to young learners (Listiani et al., 2021). Study on other social media which focusing on higher level education such as undergraduate students is very limited. The previous findings of the studies also have called for a new study in expanding much detail about evaluations of using social media within several specific aspects. As a result, it is critical to analyze the phenomenon of social media in higher education level to explore the flaws. For this reason, this present study was worth conducted to examine and describe the utilization of social media within the learning process. The proposed study focused on describing several aspects, namely perception, motivation, and attitude of utilizing social media for their learning activities of English undergraduate students at the University of Muhammadiyah Jember. This current study offers to explore the utilization of social media by higher students in their learning activities through a survey study. The result of this study was expected to provide information regarding the use of technology in the higher education level.
METHOD
The present study was carried out using a survey method. The respondents' replies to the questionnaire were used to produce a survey. The descriptive quantitative survey was utilized to gain a comprehensive overview of the most commonly used social media by English undergraduate students, as well as their perceptions, motivations, and attitudes toward using social media for educational purposes. A "descriptive survey study" is a research method that is concerned with current events in terms of conditions, behaviours, beliefs, processes, linkages, or trends (Ary et al., 2006). This study aimed to gather information from English undergraduate students on what they think about using social media in their learning activities by reflecting on their experiences and needs as learners. For data collection, this study used a descriptive quantitative survey with closed-ended questions. The purpose of the survey was to learn about the perception, motivation, and attitude of English undergraduate students toward using social media. This study used a population that was easily accessible. A total of 190 English undergraduate students at the University of Muhammadiyah Jember participated in the study, with 186 English undergraduate students responding. The data in this study were obtained from the responses of English undergraduate students to a questionnaire. The researcher used a structured questionnaire with 33 items related to the research topic to collect the data. In order to complete the questionnaire, English undergraduate students should use a 5-point Likers scale to respond to the alternative responses. The researcher gathered the questionnaire responses and proceeded to examine the data. The Blueprint of the questionnaire can be seen in Table 1. This present study used content validity and reliability. To check the validation of the instrument, the researcher did a piloting test on 30 respondents out of the selected respondents. As a result (Table 2), the Pearson product-moment (r) results showed that the r values (0.379-0.810) were higher than the r table (0.344). Hence, it means that the questionnaire items were valid to be used. Besides, the researcher also assessed the reliability of the instrument. The Cronbach Alpha coefficient was applied to test the reliability of the instrument. The Cronbach's alpha values of the questionnaires were 0.661-0.928. Thus, it can be identified that both reliability results are categorized as reliable if the Cronbach's Alpha value is more than 0.60 (Cohen et al., 2011). The information were gathered by a questionnaire, which was tabulated and measured using a frequent basic percentage. The goal of the study was to discover more about the students' perceptions, motivations, and attitudes toward using social media for educational purposes. After that, all of the research findings were presented in a descriptive manner. Finally, the theme was used to examine the questionnaire. SPSS version 23 was used to calculate descriptive statistics (minimum, maximum, mean, range, and standard deviation) of English undergraduate students' perception, motivation, and attitude about using social media for learning activities. The researcher used interval conversion to divide the perception, motivation and attitude of English undergraduate students toward social media use into three measures. The formula is written following Azwar (2012). The participants of the survey were informed by instruction on Google form about the context, the problem area, and English undergraduate students as subjects for the study in this study. The questions were sent through the Google form into the survey approach, and then they were asked to participate with their satisfaction. The identity and the privacy of participants were promised to be kept anonymous. Current research consists of two research phases in which the data were described using SPSS 23 and supported by theoretical and empirical review. To reflect the relevant concepts of textual study and prepare a basis for final interpretations, theoretical and empirical materials helped the researcher to analyze. The theory was emerged as the result of the research both from collected data sets and analyzed data.
Result
For many students in today's society, learning English has become an interesting subject. Regardless, undergraduate students' use of social media has a significant impact on their ability to improve their language abilities throughout learning activities. The study's findings indicated the perception, motivation, and attitude toward using social media, as well as the most common social media use among English undergraduate students, based on the study's objectives. The information was gathered via a Google Form Link that was distributed to 186 English undergraduate students at Muhammadiyah Jember University. The result shows the perception, motivation, and attitude of the students towards the use of social media as follows.
The English Undergraduate Students' Perception of Utilizing Social Media for Learning Activities.
Perceptions of English undergraduate students are divided into two categories: perceived usefulness and perceived ease. The descriptive statistics of English undergraduate students' perceptions of social media use at the University of Muhammadiyah Jember. Shows the statistics result of students' perception towards the use of social media. The most students (125 students) perceived a positive belief towards the use of social media with the total percentage of 67.2%. The two categories were obtained towards the benefits of social media as can be seen in Table 2. Shows that that the questionnaire had a minimum score of 23 and a maximum score of 50. The total attitude mean score was 38.98 (SD=3.87). As a result, the English undergraduate students at the University of Muhammadiyah Jember showed a good perception of social media use. The two categories were obtained: perceived usefulness and perceived ease.
The English Undergraduate Students' Motivation of Utilizing Social Media for Learning Activities.
The statistics show thorough information about the motivation of English undergraduate students at the University of Muhammadiyah Jember in using social media. The results analysis indicated that with a score of 35-55, 144 or 77.4%, English undergraduate students had a score in the moderate category. According to the result score, 77.4 % of English undergraduate students at the University of Muhammadiyah Jember had a moderate motivation to use social media. There were several reasons that motivate them as can be seen in Table 3. Shows the statistics result of motivation behind the use of social media for student's learning. İt was identified that there were five reasons that motivate students to use social media namely entertainment, personal utility, information seeking, convenience, and alturism. Entertainment (SD=0.47) becomes the most motivated aspect that underlie the use of social media for students. However, Alturism (SD=0.89) becomes the least motivated aspect that underlie the use of social media for students.
The English Undergraduate Students' Attitude of Utilizing Social Media for Learning Activities.
The behavior domain is comprised of the attitude of English undergraduate students. The result of the analysis can shows that the overall behavior score of English undergraduate students' attitude about social media usage at the University of Muhammadiyah Jember was 29.53 within a mean score of 19-29. It can be seen that 59.7% of English undergraduate students, or 111 students, had a good attitude toward social media use. The mean score for overall behavior shows that the University of Muhammadiyah Jember's English undergraduate students have a good attitude about social media use.
Discussion
The findings revealed that English undergraduate students had a positive perception toward using social media for educational purposes. The researcher examined domain results, such as perceived as usefulness and perceived ease, in relation to the overall outcome of English undergraduate students' perception of using social media. The findings of the present study corroborated the prior studies who found that social media is viewed as having potential uses for learning (Alhababi et al., 2015;Odewumi et al., 2017). YouTube, Facebook, and WhatsApp were the three most popular tools for distributing materials. İt is similar to a prior study that the students obtained materials from classmates to finish their tasks using social media and vice versa (Li, 2017). İt shows that through the use of social media, the students are allowed to work collaboratively with their peers to gain information such as instructional materials in supporting their learning (Memmi, 2015;Sumuer, 2018). The social media platforms provide interactive sharing of information enable educators to give instructional materials and learning management systems to students, especially those in higher education (Memmi, 2015). The result of the present study also found that sometimes the use of social media could distract student's attention during studying. This is in line with the result of the previous research that students become addicted to social media, which bothers their attention, thereby causing a massive decrease in knowledge retention (Junco and Cotten, 2012). Furthermore, the findings of the present study indicated that English undergraduate students were moderately motivated to use social media for learning purposes. İt was found that there were five reasons that motivate students to use social media namely entertainment, personal utility, information seeking, convenience, and alturism. The majority of English undergraduate students also believed that they utilized social media to find free information and keep up with current events. They like answering questions on social media, which they may utilize at any moment. İt supports the studies which revealed that people who use social media for knowledge, enjoyment, convenience, and personal utility are more inclined to do so (Dabbagh and Kitsantas, 2012;Dhanya, 2016;Talaue et al.,2018;Mushtaq and Benraghda, 2018). In this regard, current technology is an important component in developing strategies for fostering learning through the facilitation of collaborative learning opportunities, as well as the best approach to combine a range of factors to produce effective learning experiences for students (Heflin et al., 2017;Su & Lai, 2021). Keeping with the social media theme, social media had become a popular educational tool (Neier and Zayer, 2015).
The final result of the analysis is the highest mean score, which describes the positive behavior. According to the English undergraduate students' assumptions, learning becomes interactive through social media, and sharing and receiving feedback from peers becomes simple. They can also efficiently communicate with their educators. This present finding supports the study by Tang et al. (2015) who revealed that social media provides a variety of social roles that can help students learn more effectively. It discusses the advantages of using social media in the classroom. For example, using Twitter for academic and co-curricular discussions has improved college students' grades (Junco et al., 2011). As a result, it showed that English undergraduate students were more likely to have an optimistic outlook. They were at ease using social media to communicate with their peers and educators, such as sharing, discussing, and looking up material. The result of the present study also found that sometimes the use of social media could distract student's attention during studying. This is in line with the result of the previous research that students become addicted to social media, which bothers their attention, thereby causing a massive decrease in knowledge retention (Junco and Cotten, 2012).
The result of this study implies that it is crucial for the English undergraduate students to realize that the utilization of the features of social media beyond the importance of the learning process might impact the negative effect on their learning achievement. The features personal utility of the entertainment side of social media may affect their learning performance which may interrupt their academic achievement. Although the result suggested that they have good perceptions and a good attitude, the utilization of social media is likely to influence their performance in the learning process. There is an opportunity for future research to explore more deeply by interviewing the stakeholder in a particular institution regarding the utilization of social toward their learning process. Although this study touched on the preferred social media used during the learning process, much more research is needed to justify this preference through the larger subject. Additionally, the descriptive survey to measure perception, motivation, and attitude of utilizing social media employed in this study is based on the instruments of the relevant previous studies that were also assumed to be reliable and valid. It can be considered as the weakness of this study. Analyzing the social media utilization in education through other methods could deliver a rich understanding with new perspectives and different insights on this subject. Therefore, a few limitations were faced in the current study that should be considered in future research.
CONCLUSION
Based on the result of the analysis, it can be concluded that the majority of English undergraduate students had positive perceptions toward the use of social media in two domains: perceived usefulness and ease. There are five motivations in using social media namely entertainment, personal utility, information seeking, convenience, and altruism. The students show positive attitude towards the use of social media since it enables them to communicate with their professors and peers successfully. To sum up, the result of the research shows that the social media usage has a role to impact English undergraduate students' perception, motivation, and attitude toward their learning process.
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Covid-19 And Factors Affecting Vietnamese Students’ Readiness For Digital Transformation
Education in Vietnam is trying to make use of the values of the digital technology revolution. As one of the eight key fields of National Digital Transformation, education needs to find ways to develop and take advantage of opportunities to be able to shape the future of society with high-quality human resources. As a huge challenge, the Covid-19 pandemic has quickly put pressure on the past predicted trends in education such as the “university of the future”, but, from a positive viewpoint, it also brings a big opportunity for universities to make the transformation, from classic one to the new and trendy university – the digital one. The paper analyzes in-depth the factors affecting the readiness of Vietnamese students for digital transformation in the above context. The research model is built based on the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) theory and corrects necessary variables. The results show that the impact of Covid-19, self-study ability and attitude are the factors that have the most influence on the willingness to shift the learning method towards digitization. According to the result, the authors will propose several recommendations on improving the readiness of Vietnamese students for the digital transformation of education and training. Thereby helping students change to adapt to learning activities when the pandemic appears, and know how to take advantage of digital transformation.
Introduction
The outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic has put pressure on the education industry around the world. Until now, it is clear that the digital transformation truly brought innovation and solutions to the education industry. According to UNICEF data released on 3/3/2021, about 168 million students worldwide had to miss school for nearly 1 year; 14 countries closed their schools between March 2020 and February 2021 because of the Covid-19 pandemic. This has caused a disruption in all teaching and learning activities, pushing educational and training institutions to immediately devise methods to allow students to "stop going to school but not stop learning".
In response to the Covid-19 pandemic outbreak, the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) in Vietnam issued Official Letter code 795 on March 13, 2020, directing the deployment of online training methods in educational institutions. As the pandemic continues to worsen, official dispatch code 988 dated March 23, 2020, was proposed to unify distance learning implementation and acknowledge accumulated learning results. As can be seen, the Covid-19 pandemic has put pressure on the education industry, while simultaneously providing a tremendous motivation for digital transformation. Education and training institutions have made the most of the chances presented by the Covid-19 pressure to become "universities of the future" -a predicted educational trend (Etzkowitz et al., 2000, Marshall, 2018. Simultaneously, it is necessary to take advantage of IR 4.0 to close the space and time gap, bringing Vietnamese education closer to the quality of international education.
To research the impact of Covid19 and the factors affecting the readiness of Vietnamese students for digital transformation in learning, the article was conducted through a survey of 913 students at many universities in Viet Nam. The authors will next propose some methods to capitalize on opportunities created by the Covid-19 pandemic and encourage digital transformation in higher education, assisting teachers and students in fast adapting to digital transformation.
Literature review 2.1. Theoretical of Technology Acceptance Model
In order to identify and analyze the factors affecting intention and habit of using technology, authors have mainly used the Theory of Technology Acceptance Model -TAM of Davis (1989). According to Davis (1989), two factors ('Perceived Usefulness' and 'Perceived Ease of Use') are influenced by extrinsic factors and it can be predicted the "Attitude" of students. Moreover, "Perceived Usefulness" is not only an external factor but also directly affected by "Perceived Ease of Use". "Attitude" and "Perceived Usefulness" themselves will also influence the intention to use technology in a particular context and thereby, predict the intention and habit of using the system.
Research model
Previous studies have identified a variety of factors that can influence user behavior towards technology use. In terms of teaching and learning, Computer effectiveness (Chow et al., 2012), Social influence (Farahat, 2012), Feeling of enjoyment (Wu & Gao, 2011), Computer anxiety (Alenezi et al., 2010), and Experience (Martin, 2012) are the factors affecting students' decision to use online learning systems that researchers have pointed out. These are considered extrinsic variables in Davis' extended TAM model (Abdullah and Ward, 2016) and are limited to TAM's core beliefs (i.e. Perceived Usefulness and Perceived Ease of Use). Although studies have demonstrated that external factors also play an important role in explaining technology adoption behavior, due to limited resources, the research team did not go into depth to assess the influence of these factors; our research focuses on the acceptance of technology application in student learning activities. King and He (2006) after reviewing many studies, concluded that TAM is a perfectly suitable model to study the situation of accepting technology in learning. According to Šumak et al. (2011), TAM is the most popular theory in the research of technology and education, with 86% of the studies using TAM as the theoretical basis because this model provides the ability to solve problems. In the same opinion, Abdullah and Ward (2016) and Al-Qaysi (2018) believe that the application of the TAM model when researching technology acceptance in education and training will be more effective than other methods. Besides, through in-depth interviews and practical experiences, the research team found that students' acceptance of technology in learning is reflected in digital transformation and their willingness to change learning methods. Therefore, the team will use the TAM model as an important foundation theory and adjust the variables simultaneously to conduct research on learners' readiness for digital transformation in higher education. Since then, we have built the research model and the following hypotheses:
Attitudes (ATT)
Fatema et al (2015); Chu & Chen (2016) suggested that this attitude has a positive impact on students' acceptance of using online learning systems. The research of Salloum et al (2019) and Rizun & Strzelecki (2020) also reinforced this statement. From there, the group proposed the hypothesis: H2: Attitudes towards online learning have a positive impact on students' digital transformation readiness 2.3.3. Self-study Ability (SSA) According to the results of in-depth interviews conducted by the team, when all learning and teaching activities are online, students' self-study ability also contributes to their readiness. According to Knowles (1976), "selfstudy" is a process in which learners, with or without the help of others, can identify their own learning needs, develop learning goals, select learning aids, effectively implement learning strategies, as well as evaluate their learning results. From there, they can work independently and cooperate with others (Trinh & Rijlaarsdam, 2003). Simultaneously, Selim (2007) also suggested that the cooperation between learners can influence the use of the online learning system more. From there, the group proposed the hypothesis: H3: Self-study ability has a positive impact on students' readiness for digital transformation 2. In theory, the Covid-19 epidemic taking place in Vietnam has no relation to the change in students' learning methods. However, the outbreak of this pandemic has caused both "teachers and students to quickly adapt", and "requires changes to adapt to learning without direct interaction". Is there a positive relationship between the Covid-19 epidemic and digital transformation in learning? Research hypothesis H4 is proposed based on testing the controlling role of the Covid-19 variable on students' intention to convert digitally. Hypothesis H4 is stated as follows:
Research Methodology
The authors created a research model and a draft scale based on theory and research overview. This draft scale system was calibrated using in-depth interviews with lecturers and students from various majors and universities. Following that, the authors designed the questionnaire, conducted a preliminary quantitative survey with 53 responses, and analyzed the Cronbach's Alpha reliability coefficient to ensure that the variables and scale were adequate for the research model. The official questionnaire is completed in order to conduct a formal quantitative survey with a sample size of 913 students currently enrolled in universities in Vietnam.
The data analysis revealed that both sexes participated in the study, with women accounting for the majority at a rate of 69.1%. The majority of survey respondents live in cities (78.4% ). In fact, although students come from many regions, the proportion of individuals living, learning, and working in cities is frequently higher than in suburbs. Students from a variety of majors took part in the study as well. Students who participated in the poll studied Business and Management the most (54.3%), followed by Humanities, Social Sciences and Behavior, Journalism, and National Defense, as well as students from Health, Mathematics and Statistics, Information Technology, Engineering, and other majors such as Education and Training, Life Science, Natural Science, Law,... The obtained data were coded and quantitatively analyzed to test the scale by Cronbach's Alpha analysis, exploratory factor analysis (EFA), confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), hypothesis testing, and effect assessment through running the Structural Equation Modeling technique. The reliability of the scale is assessed by Cronbach's Alpha analysis on the preliminary survey sample. The overall Cronbach's alpha coefficient is 0.912 and the Cronbach's Alpha if item deleted coefficient is in the range of 0.653 to 0.910. The final results show that the value scales of the factor groups are reliable and the data correlation is consistent with the built scales. Then, the research team turned to EFA exploratory factor analysis to verify the convergence of the scale system of the factors in the model. Source: Summary of the research team's results, 2021 Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) with a group of factors helps to assess the convergence and distinguish the value of the scale. Both KMO and Bartlett tests in EFA show that the hypothesis of correlation between variables can be accepted (Sig. = 0.000). KMO coefficients of all factor groups are > 0.5 (group of factors Awareness = 0.789; group of 'Attitude, Self-study, Covid-19, Readiness level' = 0.923) shows that EFA can be used. The analysis results show that at Eigenvalue > = 1, with the "Principal Axis Factoring" method and the "Promax" rotation, there can be 6 factors extracted from 22 observed variables, and variance of the extraction of three groups factors is 67.99%, respectively (PU, PEOU); 65.19% (ATT, SSA, Covid-19, Readiness level for digital transformation) are > 50%. The EFA test can be used for confirmatory factor analysis (CFA).
Confirmatory factor analysis results
To test the model's fit with market data, the research team performed a CFA analysis. The scale of the independent variables has been grouped into the following groups: "Perceived value" (PU), "Perceived ease of use" (PEOU), "Attitude" (ATT), "Self-study Ability" (SSA), is shown in the The above results show that Chi-square / df = 3.765 (<5), GFI = 0.945 (>0.9), CFI = 0.970 (>0.9) and RMSEA = 0.055 (<0.06). Therefore, the model can fit the research data and can be used for the next steps of analysis.
Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) analysis
The research team used the Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) technique to analyze the multidimensional relationship between the dependent variable "Readiness for Digital Transformation" (CHA) and two independent variables in the model. The obtained results are shown in the figure 3: Figure 3: SEM results with the model without control variables Source: Summary of the research team's results, 2021 It can be seen that two factors: "Attitude" and "Self-study Ability" both have a significant impact on the "Readiness of digital transformation" of students. The independent variables contributed 54.8% of the change of the dependent variable. In which, two factors "Perceived Ease of Use" and "Perceived usefulness" can predict 69.2% of the variation of "Attitude". The P index (sig) of the variables are all < 0.05, reaching the 95% confidence level, so the relationships between the independent variables and the dependent variable are significant. Unstandardized regression weight shows the degree of impact of the independent variable on the dependent variable. ATT <---PEOU 0,284 0,000 Accepted H2 CHA <---ATT 0,329 0,000 Accepted H3 CHA <---SSA 0,539 0,000 Accepted Source: Summary of the research team's results, 2021 The independent variable "Self-study ability" (SSA) has the greatest impact on the dependent variable "Readiness for Digital Transformation" (CHA), followed by the moderator variable "Attitude" (ATT). Thus, if students support, feel excited and proactive when learning online, the level of readiness for digital transformation in learning will be higher.
As the strongest influencing factor, the independent variable "Self-study ability" contributes to promoting the level of readiness for the digital transformation of Vietnamese students. So, if students actively participate in learning activities or interact with lecturers, students will be more ready for digital transformation. This can be explained by the fact that when Vietnamese students are more active in their learning, they will also actively adapt to changes in the context to make learning easier and more effective, thereby leading to an increase in the willingness to change learning behavior towards digitalization. Moreover, digital transformation, as mentioned in the context section, is inevitable in education. Therefore, if students have the desire to be proactive with their learning, they will also have the mentality of quickly adapting to the digital transformation in education, thus enhancing students' readiness for digital transformation. In addition, Selim (2007) also explained that the active cooperation and exchange among students can influence the use of the online learning system more, hence positively affecting their academic performance (Laily et al., 2013). As a result, this can be considered as a new factor discovered by the research team to strengthen and contribute to previous works.
Besides, the variable "Attitude" (ATT) is more strongly affected by the independent variable "Perceived usefulness" (PU) than "Perceived Ease of Use" (PEOU) when the unstandardized regression weights are 0.725 and 0.284 respectively. This result reinforces Park's (2009) study, which demonstrated that perceived usefulness has a statistically significant impact on attitudes toward a willingness to accept new learning methods. In addition, the influence of attitude on the intention to accept the behavior has been confirmed through the unstandardized regression weights of 0.309 and shows the similarity with the study of Park (2009) that used to do in Korea -an Asian country like Vietnam. As students' attitudes towards digital transformation education can shape behavior towards online learning and ultimately lead to learners' acceptance of it or not. This is completely reasonable in Vietnam, students find that using software and technology equipment does not require too much effort because they always use them competently to serve their study. exercise as well as other activities such as entertainment, work, connection,...
Analyzing the impact of Covid19 on digital transformation readiness
As a control variable in the SEM model, COVID-19 also affects the dependent variable "Readiness for digital transformation" (CHA) and makes the relationships between factors might change. The results obtained are shown in the figure and table as follows:
Figure 4: Normalized SEM results with control variable of COVID-19
Source: Summary of the research team's results, 2021 The result showed that "Attitude" and "Self-study ability" still have a remarkable impact on the "Readiness for digital transformation" of Vietnamese students, control variable Covid-19 also contributes to this effect. The above three factors can explain up to 58% of the change of the dependent variable, higher than the SEM model analyzed in Section 4.3. In which, attitude can still be predicted by two variables "Perception of the value of online learning" and "Ease of doing online learning" with a squared multiple correlation index of 76, 9%. When Covid-19 is a control variable in the model, the P (Sig.) index of the hypotheses is still less than 0.05, reaching 95% reliability. Thus, the relationships of the independent variables and the control variable on the dependent variable are significant, the hypotheses H1a, H1b, H2, H3, H4 given with the SEM model have the appearance of Covid-19 are all accepted. Table 5 below will compare the impact of the independent variables between the two SEM models by the regression coefficients (Regression Weights) that have been synthesized by the group through 2 times of analyses.
Journal of Education and Practice www.iiste.org ISSN 2222-1735 (Paper) ISSN 2222-288X (Online) Vol.12, No.16, 2021 Source: Summary of the research team's results, 2021 Through the SEM results with the presence of a control variable, authors found that the influence level of independent variables has changed even though the impact relationships are still positive. Self-study ability is still the factor that has the strongest impact on the dependent variable "Readiness for digital transformation" but the unstandardized regression index has decreased to 45.9%. The control variable "Covid-19" now acts as the second strongest factor with 36.3% and the last variable is "Attitude" because the impact value has changed, which was reduced to only 15.1%. At the same time, when Covid-19 appeared, the effect of "Perceived usefulness" on attitude increased significantly (86.9%). Meanwhile, the influence of "Perceived ease of use" on attitude decreased very little with the unstandardized regression index of about 19.8%.
Covid-19, the control variable in the research model has shown an important role as the second most influential factor, only after the factor belonging to the students -self-study ability. It is witnessed that the Covid-19 pandemic causes all education and training institutions to suspend all activities, online learning is considered the only solution for students to continue their learning activities. Universities have immediately pushed to implement distance education in order to keep teaching and learning activities (Barnes, 2020). However, besides the support from the unviersity and the lecturers, students themselves need to familiarize, adapt, and actively learn with devices, software, and technology platforms, and this is considered the clearest indication of readiness for digital transformation. In fact, the pandemic has made it impossible for students to have a second choice, if they are not willing to change their learning methods, students will not be able to guarantee learning outcomes. Moreover, after going through three waves of the epidemic, Vietnamese students have experienced, adapted, and verified the effectiveness of the blended-learning model, which is a combination of online and face-to-face learning. MOET (2020) has commented that: "The results of online teaching during the Covid-19 epidemic are evaluated well. However, it is still necessary to reorganize digital transformation activities in a more methodical way to improve efficiency". It can be affirmed that Covid-19 has made learners more aware of the role of online learning and also made them use more technology, integrate more tools and software in learning. Going through such a long process has motivated and made them more ready for this educational transition.
From the research results along with the education situation in Vietnam, the authors found that if Covid-19 continues to happen, under inevitable pressure, students will still be ready to change their learning methods. However, research by Burke and Dempsey 2020 has shown that there is still a high probability that there will be a group of students who may not continue their studies if they still have to study online. This means that closing schools can exacerbate the risk of educational disruption, where learners may pause their studies (Baker 2020). Therefore, schools need to have a clear orientation about the online curriculum so that teachers can continue to deliver instruction or guide learners in an appropriate, flexible, effective, and unrestricted manner (Onwusuru and Ogwo, 2019). Thereby helping students get the best learning experience, motivating them to be more ready for this digital transformation of teaching and learning.
Digital transformation in higher education is inevitable
The world is witnessing dramatic changes in the digital age of Industry 4.0 and the far-reaching influence of science and technology on people's lives. These changes have had a comprehensive and profound impact on all areas of socio-economic life of countries. The goal of the current educational digital transformation is to train workers with enough knowledge and skills to respond to the rapid changes of society in order to avoid the risk of being fired. As a downstream training level, directly providing human resources for the labor market, only when the face of the education industry changes, universities, educational institutions, and training pioneers approach the job. Teaching and learning in a new way, making the most of technological advances and connected things, will be able to train quality human resources, keep pace with the needs of the market and meet the needs of the world. requirements of society. "The education sector is very interested in training Vietnamese citizens with digital transformation knowledge and skills to become global citizens. Doing well in digital transformation not only helps improve the quality of education but more importantly contributes to improving labor productivity, Journal of Education and Practice www.iiste.org ISSN 2222-1735 (Paper) ISSN 2222-288X (Online) Vol.12, No.16, 2021 40 creating great opportunities for international integration" (Ministry of Education and Training, 2020). With such a goal, education will be one of the main pillars, effectively contributing to the success of the national digital transformation.
Covid19 as a driver of digital transformation in higher education
It is experienced that context is one of the most important factors when discussing this issue. The Covid-19 epidemic has made a great impact on the acceptance of online learning methods as well as the willingness of students to shift their learning behavior. The essence of Industrial Revolution 4.0 is the application of technology, data science, and the use of artificial intelligence for production and human life. IR 4.0 brings many favorable conditions to help people discover new sources of knowledge, improve the scale and quality of the economy. That is a prerequisite for the transition to online learning. The Covid-19 epidemic appeared, causing all activities to stop and paralyze, but Education and Learning must always continue to change to adapt, to keep pace with the development of technology that has always existed in the current context. Besides, the Covid19 pandemic also brings many opportunities for Vietnamese universities. Tran Thi Van Hoa et al (2020) says that one of the biggest opportunities that schools must know how to seize is to accelerate the application of digital technology in all school activities from teaching, scientific research to the digitization of learning materials and management information to progress towards building a "smart university". Many institutions have determined Covid-19 is an opportunity to promote the digitalization of materials so that all lecturers, students, and administrators can exploit the positive factors in the application of information technology in management, teaching, and learning activities; and can be flexible in time and space for teaching and learning. Covid-19 has opened up a new vision, helping Vietnam's education industry orientate to build the "University of the future", contributing to the national digital transformation.
Universities and educational institutions
Firstly, it is necessary to have the policy to train and guide managers and lecturers to help them have enough IT knowledge and skills to know how to teach in the digital environment. Simultaneously, universities need to enhance research activities to find the best online teaching methods to ensure the quality of teaching and learning. Secondly, education and training institutions need to promote communication activities so that students can be more aware of the online learning process and the values of the e-learning system. Thereby promoting students' awareness of learning to help them adapt to this new learning method and be more active in the learning process. Thirdly, ít is recommended that universities should have specific plans on curricula, teaching and learning materials, etc. when universities implement online training methods. Simultaneously, universities should reduce procedures to avoid barriers for students to register for academic credits in the online learning process.
Lecturers
Firstly, lecturers need to actively use modern technology tools and apply new teaching methods to create an innovative and creative learning environment. This also contributes to strengthening students' consciousness, making them more aware of the usefulness of the online learning system. This is also the basis for creating excitement when learning according to the new learning method for students. Secondly, lecturers should actively interact with students during online teaching. Specifically, they can ask questions for students to discuss, actively communicate and answer questions for students via email, LMS, etc. This will contribute to promoting awareness of students, thereby contributing to improving students' attitudes towards new learning methods.
Students
Firstly, students -the destination of transferred knowledge, skills, and experience: In order to achieve good learning efficiency in a learning environment that lacks face-to-face interaction, they need to have a sense of self-discipline during the online learning process. Students need to actively interact with lecturers through platforms and software such as Teams, Zoom, LMS, email, etc. to discuss, communicate and answer questions about learning content.
Secondly, with the ability to use technology well, students need to equip themselves for integrating skills of using tools such as Google Drive, Powerpoint, etc., and modern technology devices such as Ipad, laptop, notetaking applications electronic, etc. to support the learning process, making online learning more effective.
Thirdly, to be able to quickly catch up with new training methods, students need to know how to arrange and manage their schedule appropriately so that they can balance between study and personal activities when taking part in online learning.\===
. The above document has 2 sentences that start with 'Thereby helping students', 2 sentences that start with 'From there, the group proposed', 2 sentences that start with 'The Covid-19 epidemic', 2 sentences that end with 'in the model', 2 sentences that end with 'the dependent variable', 2 sentences that end with 'readiness for digital transformation', 2 sentences that end with 'teaching and learning', 2 paragraphs that end with 'the national digital transformation'. It has approximately 4175 words, 156 sentences, and 40 paragraph(s).
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Effective Circuit Configuration and Control for Coil-Array Wireless Power Transmitters
This article presents a circuit configuration and control for coil-array wireless power transmitters. The target coil arrays have coils that are uniform in shape and dimensions and are regularly arranged with an angular interval of 120°. The system has a three-leg half-bridge inverter, which simultaneously feeds the three coils in the transmitter. It can deal with more than three coils by adding a switch set between the inverter and the coils. The system has a configuration to cancel mutual inductances between the transmitter coils and improve the power factor of the system. It can maximize the efficiency from the transmitter coils to the receiver coil and can output uniform power regardless of the receiver position. The current condition for achieving these features is derived, and a field-programmable-gate-array-based control for realizing the current condition is presented. The performance of the proposed system is experimentally validated with an implemented prototype. Results show that the system has a power variation of less than 5.8% depending on the receiver position. The system can operate at approximately maximum efficiency.
I. INTRODUCTION
When discussing wireless power transfer technology, misalignments between a transmitter and a receiver are inevitable issues. One of the approaches to the issue is the employment of a coil-array structure for the transmitter. The coil array arranged along a pathway gives one-dimensional freedom to the receiver. This array can be applied to a charger for moving vehicles [1], [2]. Coil array expanded on a plane gives twodimensional freedom to the receiver, without exact position control of the receiver [3], [4], [5], [6], [7].
There are several circuit configurations to feed the coilarray transmitters [8]. An inverter simultaneously energizes multiple serial coils via a series resonant capacitor [9] or multiple parallel coils via an LC and LCL compensator [10], [11]. These configurations can be fabricated simply and costeffectively. On the other hand, the same number of inverters [12], [13] as that of the coils or a half-bridge inverter [14], [15], [16], [17], [18] with the same number of legs can be used. Only the transmitter coils close to the received coil are energized by the inverter, which leads to high-efficiency and low-magnetic-leakage operation. In recent years, configurations where the switches are set between the inverter and the transmitter coils have been researched [19]. The switch selects the transmitter coils close to the receiver to connect the coils with the inverter. The switch can be a low-speed-switching device, such as electromagnetic relays, which is more costeffective than switching devices used in the inverters. Thus, the configurations can be realized in low cost and can be operated in high efficiency and in low magnetic leakage. However, the following issues have not been addressed yet.
1) The power assignment of the transmitter coils is not optimized. For instance, a current is uniformly drawn into all the active coils regardless of the magnetic coupling with the receiver coil. This operation is inefficient because the coils away from the receiver do not contribute to the power transfer while the coils generate loss. To gain higher transfer efficiency, the currents through the transmitter coils should be allocated appropriately. 2) Uniform power transfer is not always ensured with respect to the receiver position. A multilayer coil-array transmitter [3], [20] is a structure capable of uniform power transfer. However, it is not suitable for high-power applications. In the coil-array transmitters formed on a layer, the magnetic coupling with the receiver varies considerably with respect to the receiver position. Therefore, for example, the receiver above the clearance between the transmitter coils and the receiver just above a transmitter coil have different powers unless the currents through the coils are not controlled appropriately. 3) Mutual inductance between the transmitter coils is not considered or is disregarded. The mutual inductance as well as the self-inductance of the coils degrade the power factor of the system. They should be canceled to improve performance. This article proposes an effective circuit configuration and a control method for coil-array wireless power transmitters. The proposed configuration and control can be applied to the coil-array transmitter with considerably variable magnetic coupling with the receiver. In this article, the target transmitter is a coil array formed on a layer. The system comprises a three-leg half-bridge inverter, which simultaneously feeds three coils in the transmitter. The system can deal with numerous coils by adding a switch set between the inverter and the coils in the system. The system can cancel the mutual inductances between the transmitter coils with the additional resonant reactance element that is set between the connection of the transmitter coils and the inverter. The system can control the currents through the transmitter coils so that the efficiency between the transmitter coils and the receiver coil is maximized and the transfer power is uniform regardless of the receiver position. Unlike [21], [22], and [23], the control can achieve this performance with the voltage and current information in the inverter and without knowing the values of the mutual inductance between the transmitter and the receiver and the receiver position. Therefore, the proposed control can operate dynamically.
The rest of this article is organized as follows. Section II describes the circuit configuration and parameters of the resonant reactance element. Section III derives the optimal current through the coils, and Section IV validates the performance of the optimal current control numerically. Section V presents the implementation of the field-programmable gate array (FPGA)-based control. In addition, the pulse-width modulation algorithm to eliminate the influence of dead time is presented. Section VI experimentally examines the proposed system with an implemented prototype and validates its performance. Finally, Section VII concludes this article. Fig. 1 shows a concept of target coil-array transmitters, where the three coils L u , L v , and L w with the same structure and the same dimensions are regularly arranged with an interval of 120°. In addition to the coils forming a hexagonal shape [3], [20], the proposed circuit configuration and control can also be applied to circular-shaped and square-shaped coils. The receiver coil L 2 is set over the array via a vertical air gap l g in length. The arrangement of the transmitter coils does not ensure a uniform power transfer, even if current uniformly flows through the coils. Fig. 2 shows the proposed circuit configuration for a coil array with three coils. The three-leg half-bridge inverter feeds the coil array. Each coil is connected to a leg of the inverter via the capacitor C 1 . Another end of the coil is y-connected with the others, and the connection is led to the inverter via the resonant reactance element X 0 . In the figure, although the connection leads to a potential of E/2 in the inverter, any potential between zero and E can be applied to it.
A. CIRCUIT CONFIGURATION
Because of the symmetrical structure of the coil-array transmitter, the self-inductances and the resistances of the coils and the mutual inductances between the coils can be represented by L 1 , r 1 , and M 1 respectively. The equivalent equation of the transmitter is given as follows: whereV u ,V v , andV w are the output phase voltages of the inverter, andİ u ,İ v , andİ w are the currents through the transmitter coils. M u2 , M v2 , and M w2 denote the mutual inductances between the transmitter coils and the receiver coil. Arranging this equation yields the following: Setting the capacitor C 1 and the reactance value X 0 at Thus, the reactance in the transmitter can be completely canceled. In the coil-array transmitter shown in Fig. 1, the mutual inductance M 1 has a negative value, and an inductor L 0 with the following inductance is used as X 0 : Alternatively, when the coils in the transmitter are widely overlapped with each other, M 1 can have a positive value. In this case, a capacitor C 0 with the following capacitance is used as X 0 : Fig. 3 shows an expanded coil-array transmitter. Fig. 4 shows the circuit configuration for the expanded coil-array transmitter. The transmitter circuit has a configuration where a switch set is added to the circuit shown in Fig. 2. The circuit can be fabricated with less switches than that presented in [19], although the magnetic coupling with the receiver varies larger, which leads to ununiform power transfer unless the proposed configuration and control are not employed. In the circuit, a resonant capacitor is set on every coil. If the self-inductances of the coils in a group are the same, a capacitor can be set in every group. Three groups, U, V, and W are assigned to the coils and the legs in the inverter. The switch set connects an inverter leg to the coil that belongs to the same group as the leg and is the closest to the receiver coil in the group. For example, when the receiver coil is set at the position shown in Fig. 3, the U-leg, V-leg, and W-leg are connected with L t6 , L t7, and L t3 , respectively. As a result, any combinations of active three coils have a positional relation with the receiver coil, like the relation shown in Fig. 1, where L u , L v , and L w are the coils of the U-group, V-group, and W-group, respectively. This article is focused on the efficient power transfer in the coil-array transmitter with three coils, and the switchover of the coils is outside the scope of this article.
III. CONTROL ALGORITHM
The optimal current maximizing the efficiency between the transmitter coils and the receiver coil is derived in this section. The first discussion is for the case where three coils are different in shape and dimensions and are arbitrarily arranged in three-dimensional space, as shown in Fig. 5. In this case, the coils have different resistances, r u , r v , and r w . The circuit configuration shown in Fig. 2 is used to feed the wireless power transfer coils. The receiver coil has the self-inductance L 2 and the resistance r 2 . C 2 completely resonates with L 2 . The load is assumed to be a resistor R for simplification. The output power P R and resistive losses P r1 and P r2 in the transmitter and the receiver are given as follows: where ω = 2π f is the operation angular frequency of the system, andV 2i is the induced voltage in the receiver coil. The voltage is given as follows: The transfer efficiency η c between the transmitter coils and the receiver coil is defined as follows: Equations (7) and (9) imply that the maximum efficiency is available when P r1 is minimized under a fixed voltage |V 2i |. The current condition required to satisfy this can be obtained by solving the geometric question that asks the tangent point of a plane represented by (8) and an ellipsoid represented by (7a) in the rectangular coordinate system with I u , I v , and I w . At the tangent point, the directions of the normal vectors of the two geometries correspond to each other. Therefore, the optimal currents are given as follows: where λ is a coefficient. Because the mutual inductances are in proportion to the induced voltages V ui , V vi , and V wi in the transmitter coils: ⎡ equation (10) can be changed to ⎡ Thus, optimal currents are available with these induced voltages and the resistances of the coils. Based on (4) with the perfectly resonant receiver, the induced voltages can be calculated with ⎡ Consequently, on the basis of (12), the current command values I uc , I vc , and I wc for the optimal current control are defined by the following equation: where P 2c is a power command value. The phase angle of the currents is set at 0 or π . When the induced voltage has a positive value, the phase angle is set to 0, otherwise, the phase angle is set to π . Controlling the currents at I uc , I vc , and I wc can achieve uniform power transfer regardless of the receiver position. This is proved by substituting (14) into (8), which yields the following: Multiplying I 2 to both sides of the aforementioned equation and then arranging it yields the following: Thus, the power V 2i I 2 , which implies a power transferred to the receiver, corresponds to a constant, P 2c . Since the power V 2i I 2 is the sum of the output power P R and the resistive loss in the receiver coil, P R is given as follows: When the load resistance R is a constant, P R is also a constant under a constant P 2c . When r 2 is much smaller than the load resistance R, P 2c can be assumed to be equal to P R , that is, the system is robust over the fluctuation of the load resistance. Fig. 6 shows a coil-array transmitter used to test the performance of the proposed system. The three coils, L u , L v , and L w , with a hexagonal shape, are tightly arranged with an interval of 120°. They have the same structure and the same dimensions. In [3] and [20], coil-array transmitters with hexagonal coils are implemented on multilayers of a printed circuit board. The arrangement with positional shifts every layer contributes to the uniform power transfer when a current is uniformly drawn to the coils. Alternatively, the array shown in Fig. 6 consists of windings made of wires on a layer. The one-layer structure is employed for the system dealing with a larger power [15]. Its drawback is that uniform power transfer is not ensured even if a current is uniformly drawn to the coils. The receiver coil has a circular shape and is set above the transmitter via an air gap. In the figure, the three positional points are defined; remarkably, P1 is the center of L u and P2 is the contact point of the three coils. These points are used as representatives of the center positions of the receiver coil. Table 1 lists the parameters used in the analysis. Because the transmitter coils have the same structure and the same dimensions, their resistances and self-inductances can be represented by r 1 and L 1 , respectively. Fig. 7 shows the mutual inductance M u2 between L u and the receiver coil at receiver positions. These were calculated with finite-element analysis. The mutual inductances M v2 and M w2 of L v and L w with the receiver coil are distributed in the same manner. Fig. 8 shows the distribution of resistance values that maximize transfer efficiency at receiver positions. The equilateral triangle in the figure has corners at the centers of the transmitter coils. In the expanded system shown in Figs. 3 and 4, when the receiver coil is outside the triangle, another combination of transmitter coils is used. Inside the triangle, the variation of the resistance is slight; 7.14 is marked as a peak at P1, whereas 5.70 is marked as a valley at P3. The average over the inside of the triangle is 5.81 . 9 shows the power transfer efficiency η c under P R = 500 W and optimal load resistances at transmitter coil currents. As aforementioned, the currents distribute on a plane when the power is fixed at a level. To be exact, there is another plane capable of transferring the same power, which is arranged in point symmetry with the origin. In the symmetrical plane, the signs of the currents are inverse to the plane shown in these figures. It is confirmed that the optimal current command values calculated by (14) mark maximum efficiency. Fig. 10 shows the variation of the optimal current command value I u for L u at receiver positions. Currents over 1.0 A distribute widely above parts of L v and L w . This implies that simultaneous energization of the three coils is necessary to improve the efficiency, especially around the contact edge of the coils. As a result, even at P2, an efficiency of 94.9% is available, as shown in Fig. 11. Fig. 12 shows the transfer efficiencies when a current is uniformly drawn to the three coils. In comparison with the optimal current condition, the area with efficiencies of more than 80% is smaller, and the peak value is lower by 1.5%. Thus, the proposed control using optimal currents has higher efficiencies than the conventional method. Fig. 13 shows the control block diagrams. The sensed current i u through L u is transformed to the real and imaginary components I u_re and I u_im of the fundamental with the discrete Fourier transform (DFT). The currents are controlled to a command value I uc and zero, respectively, using proportionalintegral (PI) control. I u_im is zero without the control when the reactance of the coil array is completely canceled. The control can compensate for the deviation of the current phase owing to the existence of a slight reactance. The outputs of the PI control blocks are transformed into voltage with the phase angle θ u and the magnitude V u . Through similar control blocks, the voltages V v and V w for L v and L w are calculated to control i v and i w , respectively. The amplitudes of these voltages are used to generate current command values with (13) and (14). When the receiver coil is absent or away from the transmitter coils, the sum of squared induced voltages is significantly small. In this condition, the controller sets the current command values at a low level instead of (14), which can prevent overcurrent and allow the controller to detect the proximity of the receiver coil. Alternatively, the voltages V u , V v , and V w are inputted to the one pulse modulation block, which generates switching signals for the inverter. Unlike one of the techniques described in [24], the one pulse modulation block has a function for compensating for dead time. Fig. 14 explains the algorithm for it. The signal S op in Fig. 14(a) is an output of the conventional one pulse modulation block. The signals S up and S un turn ON with a lag of dead time t d behind the switching of S op . Since the output current in the inverter varies sinusoidally as shown in Fig. 14 owing to the resonant circuit, the output voltage is -E/2, during the dead time. As a result, the output voltage differs from the desired voltage. In the proposed method, turn-ON of S op is advanced, and the turn-ON duration is expanded by t d . It should be noted that the turn-ON duration is limited to half of the operation period. Consequently, the output voltage can have a desired width, as shown in Fig. 14(b).
B. FPGA IMPLEMENTATION
The control was implemented in XILINX FPGA, XC7K160T-1FBG484C. The system clock is set at 87.04 MHz, which is 1024 times the fundamental operation frequency of 85 kHz. The currents are sensed and A/D converted every 16 clocks. Therefore, 64 digital data points are available per one cycle period of the fundamental. For DFT, 128 data points are used. The PI controls are executed every 4096 clock cycle. The command generation is executed every 65 536 clock cycle. Fig. 15 shows the experimental setup. Its system configuration is shown in Fig. 2, where the load consists of a rectifier and a resister R. The parameters of the system are listed in Table 2. The load resistor R is set to 8.85 , which is calculated as the average value over the area inside of the triangle shown in Fig. 8, based on the measured parameters. This value is larger than the value obtained by numerical analysis. This is because the mutual inductances used in the analysis are lower than the measured mutual inductances. The transmitter coils form a hexagonal shape and have the dimensions as presented in Fig. 6. Because the mutual inductances M uv , M vw , and M wu between the transmitter coils are negative, an inductor L 0 is employed as X 0 . Since there are differences between the mutual inductances because of manufacturing error, an average of the inductances is used to set L 0 . Similarly, the selfinductances of the transmitter coils differ from each other. The different resonant capacitances are set so that the reactance values become nearly zero for every transmitter coil. Table 3 lists the measured reactance values of the transmitter coils that have been compensated by the inductor and capacitors. For example, X u stands for the reactance value of the coil L u while the other coils are in an open circuit. Similarly, X uv stands for the reactance value of the compensated coil L u and coil L v in parallel while the coil L w is in open circuit. It is confirmed that the reactance values are significantly low in every case. For the command generation in the control, the resistance r 1 was set to the sum of the averaged coil resistance and a conductive resistance of 60 m of the switches (MOSFET of ROHM, SCT3060) in the inverter. The receiver coil forms a circular shape, with an outer diameter of 200 mm and an inner diameter of 152 mm. The receiver coil is set with a vertical gap length, l g of 50 mm. Fig. 16 shows waveforms under the proposed control with a P 2c of 550 W. The receiver coil is set at P3, where the mutual inductances M u2 , M v2 , and M w2 are 9.45, 2.70, and 0.315 μH, respectively, in measurement. Because the resistances of the transmitter coils are uniform, the ratio of the optimal currents approximately corresponds with the ratio of these mutual inductances. The result confirms that the controller can adjust the currents in this manner. Although the current i v is distorted, the receiver current varies sinusoidally. Thus, the harmonics in the currents through the transmitter coils do not influence the power transfer. This is why control deals with only the fundamentals of the currents. Fig. 17 shows the output powers under the proposed control. The power command value is set at P 2c = 550 W. Inside the triangle, 520 W is measured as a peak power at the center of L v , and 490 W is marked as a valley at P2. The variation is only 5.77%. Fig. 18 shows the breakdowns of the losses and output power in the system, which were obtained by the measurements. At P1, the transferred power P 2 , which is the sum of the output power, the resistive loss of the receiver coil, and the loss of the rectifier, is approximately 550 W. Alternatively, at P2, the transferred power is 525 W, which is lower than P 2c = 550 W. This slight reduction is caused by the conduction loss in L 0 , the switching loss in the MOSFET, and, especially, the deviation of the resonant circuit. The mutual inductance used for determining L 0 is an average value. The difference from the actual values generates a little reactance and causes the controller to fail in accurate estimation of the induced voltages V ui , V vi , and V wi . These factors are reinforced at P2, because the sum of squared currents through L 0 is the largest. Fig. 19 shows efficiencies η s of the whole system at P 2c = 550 W. An efficiency of 93.13% is marked as a peak at the center of L v and 81.42% is marked as a valley at P3. The lowest efficiency at P3 is caused by the largest losses in the inverter as well as the coils due to the largest currents, as shown in Fig. 18. Fig. 20 shows efficiencies η s at P R = 200 W, without the proposed control, when the receiver is at P3. The current command calculated by (14) is close to the current combination with the maximum efficiency. The maximum efficiency is 87.40%. The efficiency at the command value is 86.72%, which is only 0.7% lower than the maximum efficiency. The deviation between the command and the optimal current is caused by the loss in the inverter. Fig. 21 shows the waveforms in the transient state when the receiver is at P3. When the receiver coil is absent, the controller outputs currents with a low amplitude, which is needed for the controller to detect the proximity of the receiver coil. When the receiver coil approaches, the induced voltages V ui , V vi , and V wi increase, and then the controller starts operating in accordance with the optimal current command. In this experiment, the inverter flows currents with an amplitude of 1.4 A ahead of the optimal current control. At 15 ms, the inverter begins the optimal current control. Then, the amplitudes of the currents gradually change and end up with the optimal current at 100 ms.
VII. CONCLUSION
This article proposed a circuit configuration for coil-array wireless power transmitters with regularly arranged coils with an angular interval of 120°. The system has a circuit configuration where the inductances of the coils, including the mutual inductances between the transmitter coils, can be canceled. The system controls the currents through the transmitter coils so that the efficiency between the transmitter coils and the receiver coil is maximized and the transferred power is uniform regardless of the receiver position. The experiments validate the effective performance of the system; the variation of the output power can be suppressed to less than 5.8%, and the efficiency of the whole system is approximately maximized. Theoretically, these effective performances are available regardless of the shape, dimensions, and number of turns of the transmitter coils. Future work should deal with the expanded coil array with more than three coils and reveal an effective switching method for the switch set between the inverter and the coils, in addition to an algorithm for receiver position detection.
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Back to School after Corona Virus Disease of 2019: New Relationships, Distance Schooling, and Experienced Routine
The Corona Virus Disease of 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has upset the students’ daily routine, forcing them at first into a sudden transition to distance learning and then to a return to school modelled on the basis of infection containment measures. The present research involved 157 students from schools in central Italy with a mean age of 13.58 years old to investigate the affective impact of the pandemic on the school experience and its components (recess, oral testing, relationships with classmates, and relationship pupils-teachers). The results show that only a few have experienced school interruption in a traumatic way: they have appreciated neither distance learning, nor the return to school; for these teenagers, the school of the past has died. Other adolescents and pre-adolescents tried to replace the face-to-face mode with distance learning, maintaining certain attention to the school even during the quarantine. However, the online mode did not keep its promise. Those who have invested more in digital innovation find it difficult to return to normality today. For all of them, socialization mediated by school experience is decisive in supporting the return to ordinary life after the pandemic.
COVID-19 AT SCHOOL
Preadolescents are faced with major and rapid physical transformations that engage them in constant vigilance concerned with bodily characteristics (Petter 1990;Senín-Calderón et al. 2017). Parallel to the changes in the timbre of the voice, the appearance of secondary sexual characteristics and the menstrual cycle in girls, the remarkable growth of stature especially in boys, there is a metamorphosis at a psychological, cognitive and affective level that initiates the appearance of anxieties and insecurities related to the sense of estrangement and acceptance of the new self-image (Bonanno, n.d.). Moreover, for preadolescents, parenting figures are no longer the only affective referent, social comparison processes emerge and childhood identifications begin to integrate with the significant objects of the present. In this particularly turbulent emotional dimension (Steinberg 2005) concerns with interpersonal identity become acute, increasing preadolescents' vulnerability to interpersonal influences. However, if in puberty strong residues of childhood dependence remain, in adolescence the detachment from parental figures is decidedly more marked, the adult community is perceived as "other than oneself" while the peer group becomes the counterculture opposed to the adult world in which the adolescents recognize themselves (Lutte, 1980). At the heart of the adolescent's evolutionary tasks is acquiring a sense of individuality and consolidating an autonomous identity, and the surrounding social environment plays a fundamental role in this (Erikson, 1995).
ROUTINE AND AFFECTS AT SCHOOL
School is where pre-adolescents and adolescents spend most of their time, and it provides an ideal setting to acquire social and emotional skills, as well as behaviours that translate into positive real-life health outcomes. In addition to providing knowledge and learning, schools offer an appropriate environment to promote healthy functioning and well-being for the youth, allowing them to build their identity in a constant testing both in educational and affective terms. Alerby (2003) elucidated pupils' experience of school and interpreted the meaning of their experiences showing how learning and knowledge, social relations, orderliness and rules, subjects, feelings and time-dimensions are the main aspects of youth's school experience. In particular, he demonstrated that school is constituted by multifaceted experiences which have many nuances, such as a lack of time to accomplish schoolwork, the importance of breaks and relations between friends, the importance of the relations between the teacher and the pupils, the fact that rules are decided upon over the pupils' heads and the fact that learning things and developing knowledge are positive even if school is sometimes experienced as boring.(p.17) The social structure of school consists of the patterns of social relationships occurring between the members of the school. On the one hand, we find the pupils and teachers relationship, through which adolescents can integrate their concept of the reference figure (Cooper, 2002;Guo et al., 2020;King, 2017;Uitto & Syrjälä, 2008;Wentzel, 2009). Socio-relational competencies are an essential component of teachers' professionalism linked to the well-being of their students: positive relationships between teachers and pupils have a positive association with students' self-esteem and future expectations (Marini et al., 2023). On the other hand, we find the peer-to-peer relationship, indispensable for the construction of one's own identity (Ferrer & Fugate, 2003). The school is a promoter of new acquaintances and friendships, in particular recess is a really interesting space in the school day because it's a time when there could be a lot of academic, social and emotional physical growth happening. It is characterized as that moment in which students have the opportunity to engage with their peers, get to know each other, play together, tell each other about school, extracurricular experiences and create new bonds (Alerby, 2003), which in many cases accompany the adolescent also in the subsequent stages of life.
The COVID-19 pandemic has forced the school system to a sudden and unprepared transition to distance learning, upsetting the daily routine of the youth (Aristovnik et al., 2020;de Figueiredo et al., 2021;Guo et al., 2020;Rothstein & Olympia, 2020;Sama et al., 2021) and engendering negative emotions (Brooks et al., 2020;Cao et al., 2020;Elmer et al., 2020;Ma & Miller, 2021;Zimet et al., 1988). The closure of educational institutions in order to contain the spread of the disease, has required the activation of measures to maintain continuity of learning. The Italian Ministry of Education, with the support of other organizations, has provided professional development to teachers and technological devices to students, accelerating the integration of technology in the teaching and learning process (Pellegrini & Maltinti, 2020). Due to the containment measures imposed during the state of emergency, important aspects of the lives of preadolescents and adolescents have been negatively impacted (Vicari & Pontillo, 2022), and they have had to shape their social practices (Welch, 2016) according to new times and spaces (Sabato et al., 2021). These forced changes make it even more important to gather new research evidence on adolescents' affective experience.
In this article we take into account a peculiar concept of affective experience based on psychological theory that uses the term "affect" to refer to the underlying experience of feeling, emotion, attachment and mood (Hogg et al., 2010). The psychoanalytic origins of the concept is claimed by Andre Green (1999) who describes the affect as a complex mental phenomena in which the embodied experience is connected with an idea whereas emotions can be independent from intellectual thinking. Affects begin at the dawn of mental life, when ideas first become associated with sensations of pleasure-unpleasure. The latter are primarily connected with gratification and/or lack of gratification of drives and wishes. The development of affects and their differentiation from one another constitute an aspect of Ego development. Freud (1915) described the affect as a subjective state: What is an affect in the dynamic sense?It is in any case something highly composite. An affect includes in the first place particular motor innervations or discharges and secondly certain feelings; the latter are of two kinds -perceptions of the motor actions that have occurred and the direct feelings of pleasure and unpleasure which, as we say, give the affect its keynote.(p.396) Within affective experience we can include feelings, emotions even as first reactions, affectional bonds and attachment that human beings live in their significant relationships since their childhood. Further current research about the concept of affect can be found in Aguillaume (2008).
Giving importance to affective experience we can ask if with distance learning has it been possible to preserve the affective ties based on face-to-face relationships, active participation, personal engagement, social interactions that characterize school life in-person.
SCHOOLING EXPERIENCE DURING THE PANDEMIC
Distance learning has had important implications both on a strictly didactic and psychological level, with a strong impact also on the relational dimension (Aguilar et al., 2020;Viner et al., 2020) bringing out in young people the thought that it is not possible to substitute the complex experience of school with only distance learning (Montanari, 2021;Pediconi et al., 2021). Adolescent, forced to restrict their relational space within the home, have suffered the effects of a collapse of boundaries in which roles and activities have merged with each other, making the distinction between the various environments, between school experiences and extracurricular experiences in general, blurred (Micalizzi, 2021;Segre et al., 2021).
Research has shown that a positive family climate, a good relationship with the teachers, and a good self-regulation of emotions were important factors in facing the difficulties due to distance learning (Pozzoli et al., 2022). Authenticity and collaboration have facilitated children's learning, as well as supportive pedagogies and motivational strategies, improving their well-being and enabling academic progress (Yates et al., 2021). However, for the majority of children distance education increased social class academic disparities: youth with disadvantaged families (low economic resources, only one shared computer, lower quality of hardware, software and internet access, absence of individual study space, lower digital skills, the main use of digital resources for entertainment rather than for work and education, less drive for autonomy and independence) have had huge repercussions in the continuity of learning rather than those with upper/middle-class families (Goudeau et al., 2021). Studies in special education also show significant losses in the developmental and educational processes of students with a disability compared to a pre-pandemic ordinary school setting, highlighting as protective factors specific teaching tools and caring human contact, a supportive home environment, adequate Information and communications Technology (ICT) devices and a good internet connection (Capurso & Roy Boco, 2021).
However in a relevant number of cases distance learning has brought with it many psychological problems such as an increased level of restlessness, aggressiveness, anxiety, depression, irritability, boredom, inattention, a scarce commitment and autonomy during lessons in the youngest, and exacerbated the difficulty of children with pre-existing behavioral problems like autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (Maggio et al, 2021;Panda et al., 2021;Scarpellini et al., 2021), in some cases it has also stimulated the resilience of young people who have chosen to occupy an active role in the choice of methods, activities and organization, using the experience of distance education to develop more profound self-regulation and call for reshaped, more collaborative roles and relationships with teachers for the future (Kovács Cerović et al., 2021). In particular, recent research has highlighted the importance of selfefficacy in developing and dealing with the experience of distance learning: adolescents most confident have emphasized their successes by making the best use of relational resources, whereas those less confident children have more strongly perceived the difficulties not only in learning but also in the more social aspects of the school (Pelikan et al., 2021).
During distance learning, students felt the need to participate in more interactive activities, inviting teachers to make every effort to transform the online "traditional" frontal teaching into more practical activities (Cadamuro et al., 2021). By meeting the teachers online every day, the students were able to maintain only very partially those informal relational aspects (physical contact and informal gestures) that characterize the pupils-teachers relationship and which are so decisive for the school experience. The voice remained almost the only one supporting online schooling relationships (Addimando et al., 2021).
BACK TO SCHOOL
Once the educational institutions reopened after the lockdowns, adolescents and preadolescents returned to school but did not find the same situation they had experienced before the COVID-19 pandemic, and they have adapted to the return to in-person education (Klootwijk et al., 2021). If before the pandemic the school represented an ordinary setting and gave adolescents a sense of normality and continuity, the return to post-lockdown school meant for young people a break in the "new-normal" routines that they had experienced with distance learning and families at home (Pelaez & Novak, 2020). At school they had to adapt to a new "abnormality" (Crick, 2021): made of masks, daily temperature checks, washing hands upon entry into the classrooms, frequent cleaning and ventilation spaces, break time sitting in the chair, and keeping a distance of 1.5 meters from their friends which all required psychoemotional processing (Levinson et al., 2020).
Although generally among most students positive affections prevailed on their return to school, testimony to the success of an adaptive and dynamic process capable of coping even with sudden changes, it should not be underestimated however the difficulties, especially of those who already showed pre-existing psychological problems, special needs or disadvantages, and who returned to school with fewer resources, feeling more vulnerable and in need of more targeted support (Fegert et al., 2020;Flynn et al., 2022). Taking into account the demographic variables, it seems that the female secondary school students who experienced the return to school at a particularly critical moment reacted to the new school reality in a more pessimistic manner.(Branquinho et al., 2021;Lessard & Puhl, 2021;Pediconi et al., 2021).
Several authors have highlighted how the school could play an important role in helping children to analyze past events and identify key coping trauma strategies (Capurso et al., 2020;Dvorsky et al., 2021;Waters et al., 2021). This could be done by giving voice to adolescents and adopting a positive education following the principles of prevention-based psychology and promotion-based psychology (Slemp et al., 2017;Waters et al., 2017), so that school could become the favourite place for adolescents and preadolescents in which to process emotional critical events connected to the COVID-19 pandemic, rediscover interpersonal connections, develop an awareness of effective coping strategies, build up their resilience and minimise the risk of long-lasting difficulty. Activities that encourage classroom discussions about the event and that promote different narrative modes (e.g., story-telling, drawing, writing, fantasy) without prejudice or suggestion allow youth to express feelings and thoughts, to accept them as a normal part of their individuality and to learn new strategies through sharing and comparison with others (Capurso et al., 2020). Through narratives, youth can explore hypotheses and test different solutions (Bruner, 1986), reflect on different ways of coping with events and assess the consequences of different responses (Kratochwill et al., 2016).
Taking into account research evidence, this work aims to investigate and identify the aspects that support the school experience and distance learning, as well as the impact that their absence/presence has had on the emotional experiences of young people during the pandemic. It could therefore provide important information on how to best invest efforts and resources in future emergency situations.
THE PRESENT STUDY
Recent studies about "school hesitancy" (Bushweller & Lloyd, 2021;Goldstein, 2021;Polikoff et al., 2022) point out the resistance of families to leave the established routines based on remote learning. Some are reluctant to interrupt their newfound stable alternatives for a return to school shaped by hybrid schedules -with students in class some days of the week and working from home on others -in facing the risk of closures and quarantines.
We can observe that some teenagers, even knowing their schools had reopened, started to feel that remote learning works better for them. As a consequence, superintendents and school leaders are now in a bind. Most believe that endless remote school poses health and social risks for kids, but they do not want to pressure families. Continuing adherence to social-distancing guidance also means most schools cannot operate at full capacity, and staffing remains an issue.
Most researchers asked teachers and families about the well-being, motivations and health of adolescents during distance schooling in the pandemic period (Scarpellini et al., 2021;Toseeb et al., 2020). Although the transition from pre-pandemic school to post-pandemic school implied an entire new educational system, only limited research has been conducted in which adolescents have been asked directly about their school experiences (e.g. Duckworth et al., 2021;Fisher et al., 2021;Holzer et al., 2021;Klootwijk et al., 2021;Montanari, 2021). Indeed, at the current time research in literature lacks data about how the aspects of school routine, relations, and moments experienced before the pandemic have favoured or hindered the return in person, and the experiences related to distance learning. The present study aims to address this gap by answering three research questions about the school experience described by students themselves: • RQ1 -What aspects of schooling experience before the pandemic did students hold when they returned to their desks after distance learning?Both the formal and informal aspects of the school routine will be analyzed.
• RQ2 -What was the students' schooling experience during distance learning?Middle and high-school students will be considered.
• RQ3 -What components of students' schooling experience promoted or impeded their return to school in person?It will be analyzed how distance learning influenced the affective experience linked to the return to in person classes.
SAMPLE AND PROCEDURE
The research involved 157 students (50, 3% male and 49,7 % female) with a mean age of 13,58 years old (SD = 2,107) from central Italy. In order to compare the experiences of preadolescents and those of adolescents, participants were selected from lower secondary school (Age 11-13, N = 87, 48 females and 39 males ) and upper secondary school (Age 14-18, N = 70, 30 female and 40 males). The sample didn't include students with the declared conditions of fragility (i.e.hospitalized students, students with mental health issues, learning difficulties, language difficulties, and foreign students).
The data were collected in-person both in lower and upper secondary schools (October 2021) after the reopening of schools ended the acute phase of the health emergency from COVID-19.
The anonymous questionnaire was dispensed during school hours by two school psychologists after obtaining informed consent from parents and assent by the participants. The activity was approved by the local school board.
MEASURES
In line with the recent studies about online distance learning (Kovács Cerović et al., 2021;Mishra et al., 2021) and on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the experiences of young people (Branquinho et al., 2021;Scott et al., 2021;Yates et al., 2021), we prepared an ad hoc questionnaire inspired by the Sacks and coll."Sentence Completion Test" (Sacks & Levy, 1950). It was administered in October 2021 in person, when the state of emergency was lifted and schools were reopened. It consisted of two types of items: "sentences to complete" relating to the teenager's experience of school during the quarantine (distance learning) and after strict emergency state (i.e."The return to school in September 2020…", "When I think of DAD/DID…", "My teachers…") and multiple-choice questions for demographic and educational variables. In particular, the questionnaire was used to investigate: • daily school routine including both informal (recess and relationships with classmates) and institutional school moments (oral testing and relationship pupils-teachers) to answer RQ1; • emotional experience of distance learning to answer both RQ2 and RQ3; • emotional experience of returning to school to answer RQ3; • who adolescents and preadolescents spent time and space with during the lockdown to answer RQ3.
Demographic and educational variables were the type of school, age, and gender we con. All responses were classified as "positive", "neutral" or "negative" by two independent observersraters, both psychologists with professional experience in the research field, with an inter-rater reliability of 0.81. Any disagreements regarding attribution were discussed until a consensus was achieved. Specifically, the responses were classified as positive when the completed sentence showed positive experiences or feelings towards the subject of the proposition (i.e."When I think of DAD/DID I think that I had less anxiety and it was easier for me to follow the lesson"), as negative when the completed sentence showed negative experiences or feelings towards the subject of the proposition (i.e. The return to school in September 2020 was stressful and awful for me"). Sentences that did not have any affective connotation were classified as neutral (i.e."My teachers were mostly women/as always).
To deepen the analysis of the affective experience that supports the school one, a general synthetic indicator has been constructed by adding the evaluations that adolescents and preadolescents have reserved for the individual components of the daily school routine and it has been labelled the "feeling of the school". In particular: positive responses have been encoded as +1; negative responses have been coded as -1; neutral responses have been coded as 0. For each participant, a numerical indicator was thus obtained, represented by the algebraic sum of all his/her evaluations, called "feeling of the school".
DATA ANALYSIS
Psychometric analyses were conducted through the IBM SPSS Statistics statistical software version 25.0. Data analysis was performed using frequency distributions for categorical variables, Anova, T-test and Pearson correlations for numeric variables.
To answer RQ1 the a Chi-Square test was performed on differences between adolescents and preadolescents about feelings towards the components of daily school routine: oral testing, recess, and relationships with classmates and teachers.
To answer RQ2 Pearson correlation and test of Chi-Square were performed to detect differences between adolescents and preadolescents about feelings towards distance learning; in addition, a test of Chi-Square was performed to analyse feelings about distance learning matched by the affective relationship with teachers and by the informal routine during the recess. To answer RQ3 a test of Chi-Square was performed to detect the feelings linked to returning to school matched by age (adolescents and preadolescents), the experience of distance learning, the relationship with classmates and by other aspects of informal routine (recess). Chi-Square was also performed to analyse the influence of attachment figures with which the children experienced the quarantine on the feelings related to going back to school. A T-test was performed to detect a significant difference in averages of "general feeling of school" related to experienced distance learning. Anova was performed to analyse how the general feeling of school changed based on age (adolescents and preadolescents).
DAILY SCHOOL ROUTINE IN CONTINUITY PRE-POST PANDEMIC PERIOD
In this first section the findings presented are related to RQ1 about what aspects of schooling experience before the pandemic the students had held when they returned to their desks after distance learning schooling. Both the formal and informal aspects of school routine will be analysed.
As can be seen in Figure 1, once back at their school desks the middle school students (preadolescents) consider the relationship with the teachers very important (80.2%rate them positively) and seem less willing to note any shortcomings or defects, indeed only 16.3% express a negative opinion. For pre-adolescents an affectionate bond with teachers is confirmed as an extension of emotional ties with significant figures even at school. High school students estimate their teachers (61.5% positive) as well, although a not insignificant number prefers to maintain a position of neutrality (21.4%) that could conceal more critical comments. It should not be forgotten that for high school teenagers the relationship with teachers becomes challenging as an expression of a growing confrontation with adult figures (Cooper, 2002;Wentzel, 2009).
Considering the institutional aspects of school experiences, Figure 2 shows that the experience of oral tests improves with age. In an oral test the teacher asks several oral questions to the student in order to evaluate his/her preparation on specific topics. Preadolescents are in greater difficulty than high school boys (60.9% vs 34.3%). Most middle school students have a negative and anxious attitude towards oral tests, which they see as challenging not only their academic performance but also their self-esteem. On the contrary, adolescents, while not hiding experiences of difficulties during the oral test, seem ready to take up the challenge, and are more willing to test themselves (51.4% vs 35.7), in fact there are just a few who neutralize the feelings related to being evaluated (14.3% vs 3.4%). Among the informal aspects of the school routine, for sure it is recess that has a privileged position -it is the pre-adolescents who are most enthusiastic about it, even if there are good experiences also among the adolescents. Figure 3 shows that very few speak badly of recess, yet among adolescents there is a greater impatience, as shown by the high number of neutralizations (55.7%) concerning break times. Adolescents that neutralized judgement could therefore hide a certain emotional distance.
WHAT AFFECTED THE DISTANCE SCHOOLING EXPERIENCE
This second section presents the findings related to the second research question (RQ2) about what was the students' experience, both for preadolescents and adolescents, of distant learning during the pandemic. Students' approval rating of distance learning matched by age will be statistically analysed.
The statistical analysis of the correlation between the experience related to distance learning and age (r(154) = .27,p = .001)shows that the positive evaluation of distance teaching grows proportionally to age. The high school students appreciated it more. The significant differences in Figure 4 also confirms this fact: the vast majority of middle school students (69.8%) have negatively assessed distance learning, highlighting problems and disadvantages, while among the students of high school there are slightly more of those who rate it positively (54.3%). Both preteens and adolescents had to process their surprise about the school interruption due to the pandemic, only partially replaced by distance learning.
In the literature there are interesting qualitative gender differences relating to the lockdown experience (Capurso et al., 2023;Capurso et al., 2022): data report that females missed school, family and relatives, hanging out, and having direct contact with others more than males. Adolescent girls present higher emotional sensitivity to stressful life events, and consequently, they tend to report higher levels of attachment to peers and favour quality intimate relationships. Instead, especially among middle school students, males missed sport and hobbies but were helped by video games and TV. Other studies found that females experienced more negative emotions during the distance learning experience (Cadamuro et al., 2021). Despite many researches showing important results about gender differences, our statistical analysis did not notice them.
Figure 5 shows the links between the evaluation of students' relationships with teachers (positive, negative, neutral) and their experience of distance learning (positive, negative). Among those who have negatively experienced distance learning as a new way of doing school, there are many who express a positive opinion about their teachers (79.4%). Those who have enjoyed distance learning (60.3%) also have a good relationship with teachers, but the number of those who feel negative towards them (22.2%) or prefer to remain neutral (17.5%) is increasing.
As we have seen, the moment of recess remains a cornerstone of the traditional school experience, but it is interesting to note how feelings related to recess are influenced by feelings related to the experience of distance learning. In Figure 6 it can be seen that most of those who have struggled with distance learning appreciate moments of recess (79,3%), when the school experience moves into the corridors. Only a small minority prefer not to express themselves (20.7%), while there is no negative opinion on recess among those who have negatively experienced distance learning, confirming the fact that recess is a milestone of the school experience, but in person. On the contrary, most of the young students who rated distance teaching positively preferred to avoid expressing an opinion about the moment of recess (48.4%), a good number expressed a positive response (42.2%). Note the few who do not appreciate recess at all (9,4%). Distance learning has taken away from children a distinctly social and recreational aspect of the educational experience.
EMOTIONAL EXPERIENCE OF RETURNING TO SCHOOL
In this section we present findings related to the third research question (RQ3): what components of schooling experience promoted or impeded the return to school and how distance learning influenced the affective experience of returning to school. The results highlight significant differences between adolescents and preadolescents (Figure 7) showing how students experienced their return to school. Most preadolescents of the sample (59,8%) experienced the return to school as a positive moment. Preadolescents were enthusiastic about going back to school, reaffirming the centrality of the school experience in their social life.
Most adolescents of the sample (52,9%) negatively described going back to school. Older students seem to have been more affected by the interruption caused by the pandemic. The results show significant different attitudes about returning to school between preadolescents and adolescents. Preadolescents experience a profound extension of social and emotional relationships thanks to school. However, for adolescents school instead challenges their emotional experience and success. Now, one might wonder whether the experience of distance learning has encouraged or hindered the return to school in person (Figure 8). The figure shows that most of the students who have experienced distance learning as a negative interruption express a very positive response on returning to school in person (60.9%). On the contrary, the majority of students who have enjoyed distance learning have struggled to return to school in person (54.7%): for It could be read in the light of considerable uncertainty also the number of those who effectively neutralise their return to school, and refrain from judging it positively or negatively. In addition, they are more numerous precisely among those who say they have experienced distance teaching positively (20,2%). It could be said that the students tried to replace the inperson mode with distance learning, they tried to pay some attention to school even during the quarantine, but the online mode has not kept its promise and today these students find it difficult to return to normality, precisely those who have invested more in digital novelty.
The data indicate that it is not the institutional components of the school experience (oral testing and relationship pupils-teachers) that hinder the return to school. Indeed, in matching feelings of returning to school and the perception of oral tests, were not found any significant results. These students are not afraid of questions and the more rigorous aspects of the school experience do not prevent them from seeing the school first of all as a living environment. Rather it is among the informal components of the daily school routine (recess and relationships with classmates) that can be found the inconvenience that weighs down feelings of returning to school. Data (Figure 9) confirm that for adolescents the school is the place of social life. Being able to go back to meet friends and share life with them is the main desire of those who have experienced a positive return to school (51.6%). Although among those who return to school willingly, are many who grow dissatisfied with classmates (39.3%). The difficulties among peers and with classmates are shared, as could be expected, even by those who have negatively experienced the return to school (50%).
Keeping in mind the informal components of school experience, in Figure 10 it is observed the relationship between the moment of recess and the experience of returning to school. Those who returned to school willingly could not wait to return to the enthusiasm of the bell that signals the break between lessons (57.4%). There are some who do not appreciate recess (32.7%) and only a minority who prefer not to respond (9.9%). The figure for those who have not returned willingly to school is fairly similar: most do not appreciate the moment of recess (66.7%). The moment of recess is not appreciated even by those who maintain a neutral position towards returning to school (52%).
xAnalysing the emotional complexity of the return to school, it could be important to note how the relational figures that accompanied the lockdown supported the return to normality.
Figure 11 shows the relationship between the attachment figures with which the children experienced the quarantine and the feelings related to going back to school. Among those who have experienced quarantine with only one parent, none express a positive opinion on returning to school. This data could indicate the greater relational difficulty of the children who have experienced the quarantine in close contact with a single figure of attachment in returning to the social life that the school represents. For these teens, the return to school seems to have represented the breaking of a symbiosis which, however, denounces regressive impulses that risk slowing down the conquest of emotional independence. A fact that could be read as a resistance of these teens to come out of a kind of regressive affective shell, a tête-àtête that confinement may have fuelled. Those who have spent lockdown with both parents and any siblings (nuclear family) are equally divided into positive and negative feelings about returning to school between difficulty and desire. They interpret on the one hand thoughts of difficulties about returning to normality, and on the other, the desire to return to social life. It is the extended family (composed of parents, children and other relatives or cohabitants) that supports a clear majority of children who have positively experienced the return to school (50.4%) even if they are accompanied by a certain percentage that has had a negative experience (36.4%). Only a minority prefer to abstain from evaluation (13.2%). For students of the sample the sharing of lockdown with more than one attachment figure seems to have facilitated the return to social life.
To deepen the relevance of the affective dimension that supports the school experience, a synthetic affective indicator has been developed, resulting as the algebraic sum of the evaluations of the individual components of daily school routine (both informal and institutional school moments), which connotes the general feeling with which each student invests the school experience. The findings show that the experiences related to distance learning are significantly related to the general feeling of the school. Indeed, T test (t(153) = -4.393,p =.000) shows a significant difference in averages of "general feeling of school" between those who have positively and negatively experienced distance learning: they are those who love school (M = 4.00, SD = 2.95) who suffered a lot from the transition to distance schooling. By contrast, the children who are less keen on school (M = 1.87,SD = 2.97) tolerated distance teaching better. The feeling for school becomes an important indicator also to interpret the experience of the return to school of adolescents and preadolescents. In Figure 12 it is possible to observe the chart of the averages (F(2, 153) = [12,565], p = .000)relative to the match between feeling for school and going back to school.
Those who reserve special affection towards the school (M = 4.36, SD = 2.67) are excited to go back. Less enthusiastic are the students who are less passionate about school (M = 2.42, SD = 3.16). The data relating to students who have a low feeling towards school (M = 1.23,SD = 3.01) is more complex, and who abstain from evaluating their return to school in person. An abstention that could be interpreted as an implicit confirmation of the fact that the neutralized feelings conceal difficulties of an affective nature. Tukey's HSD Test for multiple comparisons found that the mean value of feeling for school was significantly different between students who had positive feelings toward distance learning and those who lived it with more sorrow (p = .001,95% C. I. = [0.7379, 3,1272]). Also, a significant difference was detected between students that appreciated distance learning and those that neutralised feelings about it (p = .000,95% C. I. = [1.4056, 4,8405]). Instead, there was no statistically significant difference in mean scores of feeling for school between those who experienced distance learning as negative moments and those who reported neutral feelings (p = 0.243). Those who have experienced an emotionally flattened or more markedly negative return would therefore seem to have something in common: an affect for school impoverished by the pandemic or experienced as potentially painful that hinders them in returning to invest positively in school.
DISCUSSION RQ1: DAILY SCHOOL ROUTINE IN CONTINUITY PRE-POST PANDEMIC PERIOD
In view of the fact that the children spoke about school experience in general at a time when the precautionary rules dictated by the pandemic were still very restrictive, upper school students report a certain intolerance to adapt to the new "abnormality" (Crick, 2021), made up of wearing masks, washing hands upon entry into classrooms, sitting chairs at recess, as well as maintaining a 1.5-meter distance from their friends (Levinson et al., 2020). The adolescents of our sample that did not explicitly express their perplexities could experience a certain annoyance about the new forms of recess in which, due to the post-pandemic, socialisation must be forcibly "contained". Their neutralised judgement could therefore hide a certain emotional distance.
In particular, our results show that the continuity of the pre-post-pandemic school experience has been supported by both formal aspects such as oral tests and informal school routines such as recess. On the one hand, teachers have taken on a leading role confirming themselves as the main focus of the school experience both during distance learning and as guarantors of continuity in the moment of come back to school (Guo et al., 2020;King, 2017;Marini et al., 2023), as was school in person although it has been strongly influenced by Covid safety measures. On the other hand, affectional bonds with teachers and memories of the schooling routine both formal and informal had given continuity to the school experience even during the pandemic, underlying the importance of school as the most important place for the socialisation of pre-teens and adolescents.
RQ2: WHAT AFFECTED THE DISTANCE SCHOOLING EXPERIENCE
Both preteens and teenagers had to process their surprise at the interruption of school activities due to the pandemic, which were only partially replaced by distance learning/teaching. Distance schooling was experienced more resiliently by high-school students. Only a few have experienced the interruption of the school in a traumatic way: they did not appreciate either distance learning, or the return to school, reporting a kind of blackout of the school experience altogether. Other students have tried to replace the in-person mode with distance learning, paying some attention to school even during the quarantine. However, for them the online mode has not kept its promise. Those who have invested more in digital innovation, found it difficult to return to normality. For all, socialisation mediated by school experience was decisive as a support to the resumption of ordinary life after the pandemic.
Teachers remain the pivot of school experience even at a distance, assuming that positive feelings towards them have mitigated the effects of negative experiences related to distance learning (Marini et al., 2023). On the one hand, the results are consistent with other research (Cadamuro et al., 2021;Kovács Cerović et al., 2021) about the more collaborative roles and relationships with teachers. During distance learning, students participated in more interactive activities, inviting teachers in order to transform the frontal instruction into something more involving. On the other hand, those who had more detached relationships with teachers, probably due to the impossibility of having a relationship with teachers in person in which the voice remained the only one support of online schooling relationships (Addimando et al., 2021), may have had negative feelings tied to online learning.
Distance learning has taken away from the youth a distinctly social aspect of the schooling experience. Students struggling with distance learning missed informal moments of schooling in person (recess) while students better adapted to new modality at distance tended to neutralise feelings related to social aspects of school. This suspension could be read on the one hand as an effect of uncertainty that distance learning has thrown on the school in general. On the other hand, it could be read as emotional distancing from the memory of an aspect of the school routine left in the past.
Recess is undoubtedly the moment of school when students play and physically meet with peers; with distance learning teenagers have lost all that interpersonal dynamic dimension -friendships and peers, freedom, autonomy, hanging out, going out to play, physical contactthat transform school life in the arena where students undertake sense-making of the events and actively take part in a social and developmental network (Capurso et al., 2023).
A warning for the future: the maintenance of learning modalities and the spread of impersonal teaching could heavily compromise the feeling towards school of the young generation, endangering the most important experience for education and socialisation of teenagers and preteens.
RQ3: EMOTIONAL EXPERIENCE OF RETURNING TO SCHOOL
In line with other studies, our results showed that preadolescents and adolescents experienced coming back to school as a delicate moment, and the new school reality in a more pessimistic way (Branquinho et al., 2021;Lessard & Puhl, 2021;Pediconi et al., 2021). The results showed significantly different attitudes about returning to school between preadolescents and adolescents. On the one hand, preadolescents willingly come back to school showing profound openness and extension of social and emotional relationships. On the other hand, most adolescents of the sample negatively described going back to school, they seem to say: "School can never be the same again!". The previous experiences of adolescents relating to school in person could come into conflict and comparison with the new "abnormality" (Crick, 2021). Older students seem to have been more affected by the interruption caused by the pandemic, the new school has tested their emotional experience and success. They considered it a broken time that could have negatively compromised their school feeling and their feeling of self, going back to school means going back to facing new questions, confronting adults and professors who expect them to learn new information, and peers who expect new interactions (Scott et al., 2021). This data confirms the impossibility of replacing the complex experience of school only by means of distance learning (Lara-Prieto et al., 2021). It could provide further evidence of the long-term effects of the pandemic, during which pre-adolescents and adolescents were forced to restrict their relational space with deleterious effects on the distinction between the various living environments, a consequent indistinct spread of school dropout, and a certain disaffection in daily commitments (Micalizzi, 2021;Montanari, 2021;Scarpellini et al., 2021).
What favours the desire to go back to school and what slows it down?Do the students want to go back to meeting their classmates in person or are they afraid to return to the routine that forced them to get up at dawn and cope with going on school trips and the slowness of everyday real life?
The return to school becomes more exciting for those who have experienced distance teaching in a negative way, while those who felt comfortable in front of the screen experienced being frightened, shocked or disturbed returning to school. The pandemic experience seems to have complicated the indispensable relational commitments during pre-teens and adolescence (Vicari & Pontillo, 2022), a time when relationships with classmates are a blessing and a curse of the school experience (Foulkes & Blakemore, 2021), especially when they meet each other again at school. Most of those who declared neutral or negative feelings thinking about the school moment of recess have not returned willingly to school. This could signal a despondency of those teenagers who seem to almost protect themselves from moments of school socialisation, showing some difficulty in the resumption of ordinary life after the pandemic.
The composition of the family with which the student shared the quarantine was another aspect that affected the return to school. The extended family has given greater social and interpersonal continuity for adolescents, confirming the family as a factor of resilience even in the COVID-19 emergency (Cimino et al., 2021;Maftei et al., 2022). However, it cannot be excluded that the positive feelings for the return to school for children who have been quarantined with a large family has been favoured by a new-found freedom, even more appreciated after suffering the stringent and forced sharing of time and space. Also the analysis related to the general feeling toward school gives important information about the return to post-pandemic school. Those who experienced the positive return seem to have clung to the feeling for school keeping it alive within them, while those who returned to school without enthusiasm (negative or neutral return to school) they may have been disappointed by too high expectations that were not met by the restrictive measures. Disappointed students risk developing a defensive feeling (negative or neutralized) that detaches them from a school experience (Altwaijri et al., 2022;Leuzinger-Bohleber & Montigny, 2021).
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, the results show that even though online learning has been a useful tool for delivering didactic (theoretical) concepts, it has been unable to replace conventional schooling and education. However, despite the students and teachers being overwhelmed at the beginning of the pandemic, they have shown remarkably resilient aspects of schooling during different phases of contagion.
About distance learning the students tried to replace the in-person mode with distance learning. However, the online mode has not kept its promise: in particular those who have invested more in digital novelty seem to find it more difficult to return to normality.
From the perspective of affectional bonds, if the family, teachers, and memories of social moments of school routine are confirmed as the protective factors during the quarantine that have favoured the return to life in person, distance learning seems to have weighed down the
Figure 4
Figure 4 Age * Experience of Distance Learning.
Figure 5
Figure 5 Experience of Distance learning * Teachers.
Figure 6
Figure 6 Experience of Distance learning * Recess.
Figure 7
Figure 7 Age * Return to school.
Figure 8
Figure 8 Experience of Distance learning * Return to school.
Figure 9
Figure 9 Classmates * Return to school.
Figure
Figure 10 Recess * Return to school.
Figure 11
Figure 11 With whom they spent the lockdown * Experience of Return to school.
Figure 12
Figure 12 ANOVA -Return to school * Feeling toward school.
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