DigiGen officially started in December 2019, however, the project was designed long before there was any sign of the now so well-known corona virus. The pandemic has significantly impacted ICT use in/and education as many schools across Europe had to move to online teaching. The DigiGen team therefore decided to assess the impact of the pandemic with a pilot study as part of the research of the work package on ICT in/and education. This pilot study will ensure that the data collection is as relevant and informative as possible.
The information collected in the ‘Pilot Study COVID-19 Add-On’ relates to children and young people’s attitude towards ICT in/and education and the use of digital technologies, especially in times of the pandemic.
The pilot study is designed as a tool to further develop the guidelines of the main interviews which will take place in 2021 and thus to involve children as experts and co-designers in the development of the research instrument. Not only children’s perspectives but also perspectives of national stakeholders as experts from different fields are taken into account. Based on the data collected through the pilot study, researchers from Paderborn University will lead the development of an article to be published.
The teams from Paderborn University, University of Babeș-Bolyai, OsloMet, Tallinn University, and Panteion University have started conducting the semi-structured interviews in November 2020 and the results will be incorporated in the main study which is to be conducted in spring/summer 2021.