In the new normal of the COVID pandemic, in the H2020 INTEGRITY project we are currently developing educational tools for students in high schools, in their undergraduate studies and for early career researchers. While most high schools and universities have been closed for months and will only partially open in the new academic year, we need to find creative and inspiring ways to continue teaching students.

It is amazing to see how teachers around the world accommodate quickly to online instructions and how lectures, seminars, assignments and innovative tools are used to keep on communicating with groups of students and have meaningful interactions.

One thing we have learned, while developing a small private online course (SPOC), is the need people feel to see each other. Therefore, we decided that the SPOC could not only consist of asynchronous assignments for students, but that we needed to embed several live online meetings in each of the SPOCs to stimulate students in their activities, to make the interactions more fun, but also to make these more meaningful. When you see each other and have the experience of live interaction, you create a sense of belonging, of collectiveness. Thus, such a meeting would comprise of more than a bunch of students behind their device, being muted and with their camera off, while an instructor is presenting. Interaction is important, and it helps to know that you are not doing a course on your own.

Within our institution we had interesting debates about the covid-teachings in the fall of 2020: if the buildings open (partially) who will we let in and for what reasons? It seemed to be the obvious answer to say: you have to open up for seminars that require lab work. Yet, while it is certainly true that for the location-specific activities one needs the equipment in buildings, it certainly does not imply that all other activities can be done from home.

An appeal was made, using the educational philosopher Biesta’s three objectives of education (qualification, socialization and subjectification), that socialization is one of the main reasons to want to have live interaction with students. So, fresh students (first years) should be the ones we let into our buildings, and instead of putting them in huge lecture halls where they can seek anonymity, at Utrecht University many programs decided to work with small tutor groups. Lectures can be offered online, but the interaction with a small group of students, with whom you can become acquainted and with whom you can become friends was deemed necessary.

It is all about personal attention and interaction. In a SPOC environment, you also enroll with a small number of fellow students, up to 15 usually. You can get to know each other, you interact together in assignments and you can contact each other using practical tools within the course environment. However, the synchronic or diachronic experience might make the difference, hence when we pilot the courses at the end of September, we are curious if students feel more at home in the course when they have actually been able to speak to each other and to the teacher, and when they have actually gotten to know their fellow students with whom they have collaborated in group work.

Will it stimulate their motivation to do assignments on time? Will it lead to more meaningful interactions? We expect that it will, and this is something that we will assess and monitor closely.

We are curious. But whatever the outcome, if being apart during the Covid-19 pandemic has taught us one lesson, it is the great extent to which we are social beings, with a craving for live and personal interaction.