Sabrina Sailer is a Business and Economics Education graduate of the University of Bamberg, currently working as a Research Associate at the University of Bamberg, Institute of Business Education. Main fields of research and interests center about the digitalized view towards education, gamification, vocational education of teachers and university development.
Following the second-chance education, she pursued both a Bachelor of Science at the University of Munich in 2018 and a Master of Science at the University of Bamberg in 2020 in the field of Business and Economics Education with German as a second subject. Being a new member to research society, she aims for a deeper understanding within the fields of interest at the University of Bamberg where she started working last May after gaining some experience while working as a student at the lab for the last two years.
Relations between communication strategies of universities and governmental guidelines during the Covid-19 pandemic – Potential transferability for VET providers?
Co-presented with Dr Silvia Annen.
The Covid-19 pandemic forced universities to change their communication in a unique way and to switch towards online communication within a few days, missing a prior period to prepare both technically and pedagogically. Especially the government policies regarding both health issues and the support towards online studying caused a gap (see. Akram et al. 2020, 2f). To close this gap, universities used tools like their homepages or social media to inform their students. This contribution analyses to which extend they responded according to the government guidelines by comparing the following three countries:
- Italy, one of the most affected countries in Europe which shut down the whole country
- Germany, one of the medium affected countries which still shut down the country partly
- Sweden, which was affected with a delay and declined to shut down the country.
The different government policies form a reference point to compare the universities’ communication strategies. Taking the communication via homepages of the 10 best universities per country (chosen by the university ranking Times Higher Education (THE) 2019) into consideration, the information given will be analysed regarding the alignment with the government regulations (tightness of pursuing), the quantity of information (frequency of updates as steady updates of information is important, see. Schubert 2017; Casanova et al. 2011 ) and the quality of information (complexity, balance of medical information and information regarding the university life).
Within the presentation, the results will be discussed and the different approaches will be evaluated with the audience involved. A digital interacting tool (mentimeter) will therefore be used.
The comparative results will be reflected regarding their potential transferability for VET providers. In this context, the different institutional settings of VET and higher education will be discussed and their impact on the possible paradigmatic pedagogical change the Covid-19 pandemic potentially initiates.