Emerging Digital Practices Supporting Student-Centered Learning Environments in Higher Education: A Review of Literature and Lessons Learned from the Covid-19 Pandemic

Abstract

The aim of this paper is two-fold: firstly, to provide an overview of emerging digital practices that support collaborative learning, competency development, and digital literacy for student-centered learning environments in higher education during the rapid digital transition caused by pandemic-related lockdowns across the world, and secondly, to analyze and discuss how systematic reviews of generalized themes and trends can be combined with contextualized experiences and the lessons learned from the Covid-19 crisis to inform the digital transformation of higher education, with a particular focus on bridging the gap between campus-based teaching and online learning and on the identification of the digital competencies that teachers and students must acquire during the continuing shift into a ‘new normal’ for post-pandemic educational practices. This study was motivated by questions and findings emerging from an early reactive case study conducted by three of this paper’s co-authors (Lyngdorf et al., 2021a). By reviewing the full texts of 18 articles, this study provides a systematic literature review which maps the general landscape of the online, hybrid, and blended digital practices applied in existing student-centered learning environments in higher education since the onset of the pandemic. Furthermore, this mapping is used to revisit data and findings from the earlier reactive study of emerging digital practices in a specific problem- and project-based learning (PBL) environment. This study’s findings highlight critical factors and barriers related to emerging practices which support students’ interactions with teachers, content, and each other, as well as the emerging competencies that these practices will require. The paper concludes with a discussion of the main findings and their implications for further research and practice.