ICT as a Community Building Tool in Higher Education The Case of the Department of Education and Humanities at the Institute of Education and Cultural Studies of the University of Debrecen

Abstract

There are many international and Hungarian academic studies on the impact of computers and the Internet on social structures, the economy or even the individual, and in this case: on education and higher education. Basically, ICT tools are now used not only in the administration of education but also in the whole pedagogical and teaching-learning process (Byungura et.al. 2016).

    There is an increasing emphasis on building ICT infrastructure capacity in universities to mobilise human resources, from higher education policy to implementation (Byungura et.al. 2016). Our study explores and presents the articulation of ICT capacity building strategies in terms of both institutional ICT policy and structure.

    In our study, we show how in our institution during the covid situation has influenced the ease with which students have built social connections between faculty and administration through ICT tools and social media platforms. This formal structure, and the informal structure that has evolved alongside it, has been an essential staying power in the responsive transformation of the online higher education system, and we outline the online elements and opportunities that have survived and are still in place as the pandemic situation has come to an end.

The empirical source of our work is the content analysis and qualitative observations of the course materials created by the Department of Education and Humanities of the Institute of Education and Cultural Studies of the University of Debrecen in the university electronic space and the informal online and presence groups associated with the courses. Our aim is to analyse and interpret the partial group persistence before the covid situation, during the pandemic period, and the partial group persistence afterwards, by investigating how the negative social period generated persistent or partial positive effects in the online faculty-student space.