Information Systems, E-Learning and Knowledge Management (in the Times of COVID)

1. Introduction

In 1995, back when I was finishing my CS Engineering degree, the Barcelona School of Informatics started to use an intranet application called “Racó” [1] (“Corner” in the Catalan language) that allowed downloading lecture notes, deliver files to professors, and publish the grades of every course—which previously had been published on the office doors of the professors. Today “Racó” is still in use, I used it just before I wrote these lines. Some of the professionals who worked on that project went to work for the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya [2], a new distance education university, based fully on the online interaction between students and professors. With just a couple of days a year of de-virtualization for exams.

Online learning is not new. In my memory and involvement as a student and professor in these two institutions, I can trace it back 25 years.

I can even go even farther with the idea of information systems in academic processes, back in 1989 when I first enrolled in a course in the School of Informatics sitting in front of a VT100 terminal connected to a VAX-VMS mini-computer running the first—to my knowledge—self-enrollment software. Software that contributed to new architectures and the mobile-web of the XXI century still works today.

Computerized information systems (academic information systems) have become omnipresent to the point of invisibility in the education system. However, online learning has been a promise running on the fringes of the education system. Special universities like UOC, the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED), and the Open University (OU), and experimental plans to introduce laptops or tablets in education that function in the traditional classroom as the frame for reference and safety net if something goes wrong. Schools and colleges have been able to work fine without embracing online learning.

The personal experience I just outlined is not new to many of the readers. It is just a sample of the digital transformation that the whole education sector is undergoing [3], with deep implications in the way we work the workplace culture in education institutions [4]. For the last decades, the education sector has been going through a sequence of incomplete digital transformations, the new technologies, and their possibilities permeating slowly into the old ways of working [5].

Until now.

The crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has deeply affected the education system. Students, teachers, and managers have become suddenly confined at home. However, with varying degrees of success, classes have continued online.

All those experimental online learning technologies that we have kept on the sideline of education have taken center stage. Any resistance to change that has been constraining the widespread adoption of online learning has been rendered pointless.

Online learning is being tested on the whole education system in the whole confined world. This has proven a challenge for educators, students, managers, and technicians [6,7]. The lessons we learn during this period—still ongoing as I wrote these sentences back in 2020 for the Call For Papers of the present Special Issue, and sadly continues in August 2021 with the unexpected hit of the Delta variant—will be crucial for the future of education in what has been already referred to as the new normal.

UNESCO asserts that education is one of the objectives for sustainable development [8] and, at the same time, education is one of the most powerful tools we have to fight for sustainable development. The use of ICT as a tool for democratizing and improving education is a big promise. Open education technologies, like open-source software, open standards for contents and interoperability, and open contents can be great assets for improving education, making it universal and accessible, while preserving cultural diversity. However, scale economies and perverse incentives may lead to scenarios where education is left in the hands of a few companies turning education into no more than big business. From there, dystopic futures spring.

With this Special Issue “Information Systems, E-learning and Knowledge Management”, we were seeking contributions that help us make sense of how academic information systems, e-learning, and knowledge management have helped in this difficult period and how it will become more relevant in the education system in the post-COVID-19 era, especially concerning the application and development of open education technologies. Researchers and practitioners worldwide submitted their work, and 16 papers were selected for publication.

2. A Short Introduction to the Contributions of the Special Issue

The first paper “Co-Operative Learning and Resilience to COVID-19 in a Small-Sized South African Enterprise” by Alexis Habiyaremye, presents a knowledge-centered crisis management framework to examine how enhanced knowledge sharing through co-operative learning can be applied to induce higher innovation performance and more efficient resource utilization structures during crises comparable to the current pandemic. Habiyaremye is concerned with the double challenge that supposes the COVID-19 pandemic and the impact of climate change.

The next paper, “The Influence of Social Presence in Online Classes Using Virtual Conferencing: Relationships between Group Cohesion, Group Efficacy, and Academic Performance” by Pilhyoun Yoon and Junghoon Leem presents an empirical study to explore what role group cohesion plays and how significant it is to group efficacy and performance in virtual learning environments, and also whether a sense of social presence in a virtual learning environment plays a significant role in optimizing group cohesion and, thus, group performance.

The Special Issue features a series of papers that analyze the impact of lockdown and the sudden virtualization of learning: “A Qualitative Analysis of Implementing E-Learning during the COVID-19 Lockdown” by Carlos Peñarrubia-Lozano, Manuel Segura-Berges, Manuel Lizalde-Gil and Juan Carlos Bustamante; “A Methodology to Study the University’s Online Teaching Activity from Virtual Platform Indicators: The Effect of the COVID-19 Pandemic at Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya” by Joana Prat, Ariadna Llorens, Francesc Salvador, Marc Alier and Daniel Amo; “Mixed Analysis of the Flipped Classroom in the Concrete and Steel Structures Subject in the Context of COVID-19 Crisis Outbreak. A Pilot Study” by Carles Campanyà, David Fonseca, Daniel Amo, Núria Martí and Enric Peña; “Comparing Face-to-Face, Emergency Remote Teaching and Smart Classroom: A Qualitative Exploratory Research Based on Students’ Experience during the COVID-19 Pandemic” by Josep Petchamé, Ignasi Iriondo, Eva Villegas, David Riu and David Fonseca.

With all the learning and most of the assessment moved online, this paper is most relevant: “Readymade Solutions and Students’ Appetite for Plagiarism as Challenges for Online Learning” by Daniela Sorea, Gheorghe Roșculeț, and Ana-Maria Bolborici work on the challenges raised by the wide access to the Internet and students’ appetite for plagiarism have become higher. These challenges can be managed by converting students’ appetite for plagiarism (SAP conversion) into a skill of critically approaching relevant online materials. The solutions proposed fit into five categories: Better-trained students, more involved teachers, the use of anti-plagiarism software, clear anti-plagiarism policies, and ethical education of the youths. An example of it can be found in the paper “Change in Gap Perception within Current Practices in Assessing Students Learning Mathematics” by Vlad I. Bocanet, Ken Brown, Anne Uukkivi, Filomena Soares, Ana Paula Lopes, Anna Cellmer, Carles Serrat, Cristina Feniser, Florina M. Serdean, Elena Safiulina, Gerald Kelly, Joanna Cymerman, Igor Kierkosz, Volodymyr Sushch, Marina Latõnina, Oksana Labanova, M. Montserrat Bruguera, Chara Pantazi and M. Rosa Estela.

We move next to the paper “Emotional Intelligence, Knowledge Management Processes and Creative Performance: Modelling the Mediating Role of Self-Directed Learning in Higher Education” by Zahid Shafait, Zhu Yuming, Natanya Meyer, and Włodzimierz Sroka a study that examines the effects of a knowledge management enabler (Emotional Intelligence) on knowledge management processes (KMPs) in research universities. In ”E-Learning Services to Achieve Sustainable Learning and Academic Performance: An Empirical Study” researchers Mohammad Mahtab Alam, Naim Ahmad, Quadri Noorulhasan Naveed, Ayyub Patel, Mohammed Abohashrh, and Mohammed Abdul Khaleel propose a holistic E-Learning service framework to ensure effective delivery and use of E-Learning Services that contributes to sustainable learning and academic performance. In “Knowledge Management and the Political–Pedagogical Project in Brazilian Schools” by Andréia de Cássia Gonçalves Costa, Cristiane Resquiti Paulino Strozzi, Letícia Fleig Dal Forno, Rejane Sartori, Radu Godina and Florinda Matos present an analysis on how the Political–Pedagogical Project can promote Knowledge Management at the school level based on a bibliographical analysis.

In “The Digital Competence of Pre-Service Educators: The Influence of Personal Variables” by Marcos Cabezas-González, Sonia Casillas-Martín, and Francisco José García-Peñalvo, we are presented with a study on 370 students of Universidad de Salamanca to determine the influence that the variables of gender, age, and academic degree have on the acquisition of digital competence by pre-service educators.

While e-learning tools have become paramount for education in these times, their widespread and complete adoption also has a dark side. Professor Francisco Garcia-Peñalvo addresses this problem and proposes a solution in a framework in his excellent paper “Avoiding the Dark Side of Digital Transformation in Teaching. An Institutional Reference Framework for eLearning in Higher Education”, which is already the most read and cited of the whole Special Issue while I write these lines in August 2021.

Last but not least, privacy is a growing issue in e-learning. Two papers address this problem specifically. The first one: “Privacy and E-Learning: A Pending Task” by Marc Alier, Maria Jose Casañ Guerrero, Daniel Amo, Charles Severance and David Fonseca analyzes the issue of privacy in education from three points of view: (1) The technological evolution which leads to the loss of control of the institution of the personal information of the students they manage, (2) the value that can be extracted from the personal information of the students and its ethical implications, and (3) the legal frameworks that apply. The paper “A Privacy-Oriented Local Web Learning Analytics JavaScript Library with a Configurable Schema to Analyze Any Edtech Log: Moodle’s Case Study” by Daniel Amo, Sandra Cea, Nicole Marie Jimenez, Pablo Gómez, and David Fonseca presents a software development that pilots the changes in edtech that we need to improve the level of privacy for our students.