Since, in some higher education institutions, it is not mandatory for students to turn their webcams on during online classes, teachers have complained that their students have adopted this behaviour once the educational activities moved online due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Considering this, the present research aimed to identify the reasons behind students’ choice to hide their faces during online classes and find possible solutions to remedy the situation to enhance the educational process’s sustainability. Thus, this article presents the results obtained by applying an online questionnaire between December 2020 and January 2021 among the students pursuing an academic degree, recording 407 responses. The results highlighted the fact that more than half of the students participating in the study reported that they do not agree to keep their webcams on during online classes, the main reasons being anxiety/fear of being exposed/shame/shyness, desire to ensure privacy of the home/personal space, and chances that other people might walk into the background. The relevance of the research, besides the scarcity of studies on the topic, is also given by the fact that finding and understanding the reasons for this behaviour are, in fact, the first steps in undertaking regulatory interventions on it.

The Speech Act Theory was first introduced by philosophers and then approached by pragmatists and discourse analysts. While philosophers and pragmatists deal with speech acts in fabricated texts, discourse analysts focus on their occurring in real discourses. Another important distinction between these two lines of research is that philosophy and pragmatics study speech acts in isolation, while discourse analysis points to their linear and hierarchical organisation, trying to identify recurring patterns in various genres. The present paper approaches speech acts from an interdisciplinary perspective. Using a series of illocutionary force indicating devices, the paper identifies, classifies and analyses the types of speech acts used in written advertisements. The findings point out the advertisers’ preference of using some speech acts over others with the aim of obtaining the intended effect on the target audience. This quantitative analysis is performed on a corpus of eighty-four written advertisements selected from various newspapers and magazines, and the results can be viewed as genre-defining

Aiming at shedding light on the implications the COVID-19 pandemic has had on the students’ social and personal lives, this study has focused on the verbal and non-verbal communication and on the surveyees’ personal lives during the pandemic as well as on the perspective of changing their communication behaviors after the pandemic. The 409 respondents, students at Politehnica University of Timisoara, took part in a survey, conducted between 1 April and 30 May 2021, that was posted on isondaje.ro, a Romanian online survey platform. The research has suggested the following results: the adjustment of the verbal communication by speaking in a more articulated manner or more loudly; the overuse of the upper part of the face to compensate for the concealed parts of the face due to face mask wearing; the analysis of the factors underlying the respondents’ actions, i.e., relational attitudes, various greeting forms, various non-verbal reactions, which are aspects that are likely to change even after the pandemic. The results have also presented the changes that interpersonal communication could go through under the pressure of the restrictions imposed by the pandemic, but also the ways through which people try to protect their most valuable asset, i.e., communication, which defines humanity and makes us unique as human beings.

As the effects of climate change on today’s society make the headlines across the globe, urging all stakeholders to join forces to act and to create a sustainable world, universities have started engaging in the process of building a sustainable future for the generations to come. The sustainable university has thus emerged, a pro-active and collaborative university that performs in several domains. Since the university’s strategic plan is an instance of official and public communication on the future institutional development, its investigation reveals the university’s position towards sustainability. This study highlights the explicit use of the concept of sustainability in the strategic plans for 2020–2024 of the twelve Romanian top universities and points to the sustainable domains associated with it. Moreover, to determine the direction towards which the Romanian top universities are heading, in terms of sustainability, the article draws a comparison with previous research conducted on the strategic plans for 2016–2020. The main conclusion reached is that although there is an increasing tendency to use the concept in the latest strategic plans, building sustainable universities in Romania is still a goal to be achieved in the future.

The concept of sustainability has been given more and more attention lately as the effects of climate change drastically impact society and threaten the wellbeing of future generations. In this context, universities are expected to build bridges between the academic and research communities on the one hand and society on the other, and to further the values associated with this concept in order to care for the generations to come. Thus, the present study describes the causes that have led to the emergence of this concept, defines it, and highlights some of the actions taken by universities and researchers. The question raised regards the position of the top Romanian universities towards the concept of sustainability. The way it is used explicitly in their strategic plans is viewed as proof as to whether the universities give it prominence or not, and as such, act accordingly. In order to achieve the primary objective of the research, a quantitative and a qualitative analysis were carried out. The main conclusion drawn is that the top Romanian universities are still at the beginning in terms of raising awareness about the concept and in terms of implementing sustainable measures in the domains that help them build sustainable universities.