A year of pandemic education - in numbers and facts
On March 10, 2020, the authorities announced the closure of all educational institutions in Romania, on March 11, 2020 thus marking the beginning of a challenging period in university education. Education in UPT has been transferred exclusively online, UPT Virtual Campus becoming the core of educational resources for both teachers and UPT students.
In March 2020, UPT already benefited from a modern infrastructure dedicated to integrated digital education, developed and updated in the last decade, with CVUPT having as users over 700 teachers and 10,000 students with fish 1,600 courses managed through the platform.
On March 11, 2020, in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic when all teaching activities went exclusively online, the integration of new courses and online support was achieved quickly, structured and integrated. In the interval March 2020 - March 2021, activity on CVUPT increased to over 13,000 of active users, with almost 4,000 courses managed through the platform.
In 2020, UPT Virtual Campus has been updated with the version Moodle 3.9, a version that brings major improvements on the integration side of H5P, MoodleNet, choice test, usability and not only. In record time, the CVUPT team optimized the server-level infrastructure to accommodate the transition of all UPT teaching activity to the online environment. In addition, in order to facilitate the management of teaching activities, the integration of Fr.the ZOOM video conferencing platform in the Virtual Campus and (partially) of the official Active Directory infrastructure of UPT. During this period were recorded over 100 million interactions on the Virtual Campus, have been integrated 26 new plugins and average users / minute increased to 3,000.
The administration team of the UPT Virtual Campus was extended, by co-opting some Administrators from the faculties.
UPT channel from the platform Zoom recorded during this period 77,105 meetings, 114 webinar sessions with fish 26,000 participants.
Ongoing support for teachers and students
Continuous support was provided by 32 webinars dedicated to teachers and students and a total of 86 tutorials developed, available online (https://elearning.upt.ro/campus-virtual/ ), free of charge and communication has been streamlined by introducing a new academic support tool - Digital Education Support and ID / IFR UPT (https://suport.elearning.upt.ro), available to teachers, students and online candidates from UPT.
UPT's vision of digital transformation and support for digital education have also been transferred to the community, CeL UPT launching on April 15, 2020 the series of practical webinars on online education and experience during this period. Webinars Together Online they took place weekly, gathering over 9,000 participants and dozens of partner institutions from academia, pre-university and other stakeholders. (www.elearning.upt.ro/ro/impreuna-online).
The 24 editions of webinars addressed issues such as the transition from campus education to online education, preprimands and opportunities for stakeholders in schools and universities during the pandemic, uthe use of OER, MOOCs, learning platforms and new technologies in education, ithe impact of new technologies, AR & VR, artificial intelligence in education and society, digital storytelling, innovation, creativity and pandemic entrepreneurship, or promoting women in STEM, being issued over 8,000 de Open digital certificates for participants and better than 100 open digital certificates for Presenters and Moderators.
CeL joined ISJ Timiș, the AntiCovidTM Platform and TVR Timișoara, also coming to the support of pre-university teachers by launching a guide with good practice recommendations and webinars dedicated to teachers from Timisoara schools and beyond. (https://bit.ly/3e7DMrt)
The global epidemiological situation determined that the 29th edition of EDEN Annual Conference - Human and artificial intelligence for the society of the future. Stimulating digital education for the next generation of students STE (A) M, scheduled for the summer of 2020 in Timisoara to be organized for the first time online, by the UPT e-Learning Center.
In the June 22-24, 2020, the first EDEN virtual conference gathered 278 participants from 40 countries on 4 continents, over three days with over 90 published academic papers, interactive workshops, keynote speakers with cutting-edge presentations, but also virtual tours of Timisoara enriched with elements of AR / VR, a virtual festive dinner with traditional dishes and a virtual tour of the most beloved festivals in Timisoara.
The 5th edition of the international Digital Skills workshop took place, for the first time online, on Wednesday, December 16, 2020, recording over 1500 registrations and over a thousand participants and a real success for digital education, bringing practical examples of the use and integration of digital elements, web, mobile, virtual and augmented reality (AR & VR) applications in education, culture and in the promotion of cultural heritage and creative industries.
The one VIII edition of the International Workshop Open Education during the pandemic took place for the first time online, on Wednesday, March 3, 2021, with Pis 1,100 participants from dozens of localities in Romania, Europe and the USA, 16 international speakers, dozens of topics of interest, information and results of the latest research, hundreds of questions and messages, in a interactive session broadcast live, simultaneously on 3 platforms, for more than 6 hours. The event, held within Open education week was dedicated this year to open education during the pandemic, in the context in which Under the uncertainty of the last year, for many actors in the field of education, free access to knowledge, open education, open educational resources, and especially collaboration between individuals and institutions have become the "engine" for integrating digitalization and digital transformation. the most rigid and traditional education systems in the world.
