Educational life worldwide has been shaken by the closure of schools due to the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic. The ripple effects have been felt in the way both teachers and students have adapted to the constraints imposed by the new online form of education. The present study focuses exclusively on the beneficiaries of the educational process and aims to find out their perceptions of face-to-face and e-learning and their desire to return, or not, to the traditional form of education. These perceptions are represented by 604 students of the Politehnica University of Timisoara, who were asked to respond anonymously to an 8-question questionnaire between December 2020 and February 2021. The results show the respondents’ levels of desire to return to school (especially of those who have only benefited from e-learning) and their degree of involvement during online classes. The results also specify the advantages and disadvantages of the two forms of education from a double perspective, namely that of first-year students (beneficiaries of e-learning exclusively), and of upper-year students (beneficiaries of both face-to-face and e-learning). The study points out key information about e-learning from the students’ perspectives, which should be considered to understand the ongoing changes of the educational process and to solve its specific problems, thus ensuring its sustainability.
The COVID-19 pandemic has left a mark on education as it had been known before. Beyond his, attention needs to be paid to the transition back to face-to-face learning and its implications. Within this context of change, the present research focuses on identifying the students’ preferred aspects of online education during the pandemic, namely learning, teaching, assessment, and interaction with peers and teachers, in order to improve face-to-face education by contextually adapting it to their needs. A survey was used on a representative sample of students from Politehnica University of Timisoara, Romania, who were required to indicate their preferred form of education and the most beneficial one for their professional development. The results indicate the targeted students’ several preferences, such as teachers’ support with electronic educational resources, the use of online educational platforms to access resources and take tests, the easier and individualized communication with teachers, as well as peer connectivity in common projects. These findings identify practical suggestions that lead to a balance between face-to-face and digital education, probably under the form of blended learning, which could be considered by the main stakeholders in order to have a future sustainable education.
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.
20 March 2020 in Scientific Bulletin of the Politehnica University of Timişoara Transactions on Modern Languages
The present paper introduces briefly one of the most important theories and models of visual social semiotics, namely Kress and van Leeuwen’s grammar of visual design. An image, advertising honeymoon packages, is used to illustrate to the reader the points presented by the theory. The conclusion includes practical implications of the theory, pointing out several areas where visual social semiotic analysis can be applied.
The era of globalization has led to frequent communication among people with different linguistic and cultural backgrounds, carried out usually in English, the modern lingua franca. English has influenced the languages of the world, which have started to borrow words in order to keep up with progress and internationalization. Anglicisms are used in almost every field, education being one of them. This paper highlights the presence of Anglicisms in the field of education, and focuses on a multilingual dictionary of education, from which it gathers a corpus in three different languages: Romanian, German, and French. The study aims to identify the Anglicisms employed in the educational field in the three languages aforementioned, and to analyze them comparatively, pointing out the similarities and differences among the languages in question.