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The Covid-19 pandemic has shaped every area of our lives in few months, and the consequent effects at personal, professional and organisational level are unprecedented. Specifically, as a consequence of this forced change, Higher Education systems have registered the necessity to transform learning and teaching processes to provide responses to new learners’ needs. The aim of the paper is to present the output of a comparative group discussion of Intall project, and to show how it supports reflection on some practical implication for the New Normal. Reflecting on the output obtained through a comparative group discussion on ‘Re-thinking teaching and learning during the pandemic Covid-19’, the paper wants to present the main issues that the education systems have been facing during the pandemic, and to provide insight into the practical implications for the New Normal in higher and adult education. This paper provides some contributions to the debate on teaching and learning in higher education for the New Normal.

A crucial action of COVID-19 combat is the quick design and building of makeshift hospitals (MHs). Although adopting building information modeling (BIM) promotes the digitalization and communication of design collaboration, data security vulnerabilities (e.g., lacking traceability and transparency) are detected and have inevitably impeded the efficiency and productivity of the MH project. Such problems often lead to rework and unnecessary disputes, wasting valuable time on projects requiring ultra-fast construction speed. The emerging blockchain technology offers an immutable and traceable collaboration environment. However, limited studies have integrated blockchain in the BIM design process, especially design in emergency projects like MH. Therefore, this paper proposes a blockchain-enabled collaboration (BEC) framework for fast and secure BIM design. The framework is illustrated in an actual MH project in Hong Kong, and results show that: (1) it supports secure and automated BIM data exchange and (2) it saves 23 % of the time in a design coordination case

This volume of the BiAS/ ERA series chooses a multi-religious approach to the religio-cultural aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the attempts to overcome it by vaccination. The book includes contributions focusing on African Traditional Religion, several branches of Christianity in Africa, and Islamic denominations. In contrast to other volumes, BiAS 37/ ERA 12 is not limited to a specific country – not even to the African continent. It gathers papers from the international and multi-religious workshop “COVID-19 and Religion” (November 2021, University of Bamberg) and some additional articles. The contributions to BiAS 37 focus on the vaccination debate. “Why should God, Scripture, and Church be against vaccination?” is the main question, and there are some indications that social and political factors that regulate the cultural application of religion might be more important for vaccinophobia than faith itself.

Cities play a leading role in addressing many of the global challenges of the 21st century. They are an important part of the 2030 Agenda for sustainable development, which assigns them multiple tasks. Cities should be committed to reducing the ecological footprint and to creating solutions that respond in a differentiated way to the challenges and opportunities in different areas of the world. The sustainable development strategies of cities have determined the definition of different urban models, focused on the need to offer citizens well-being and innovation. This contribution presents the model of learning cities (LC), cities that put learning and education at the heart of their strategies. The paper identifies some of the possible strategies to make cities more responsive to the learning needs arising from the recent pandemic crisis.

Italy was one of the countries severely affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. An analysis of the factors that played a role in the spread of this epidemic is necessary. However, the assessment of which factors may be specific, and which may contribute the most is complex and involves a high degree of uncertainty. The main objective of this study is to evaluate and analyse the statistical associations of the spread of Covid-19 infection with identified spatial context variables (density, old-age index, average temperature, and pollution). For this purpose, the developments from the spatial convergence theory were considered, as well as data from the Italian provinces from March 2020 to February 2021, referring to the first, second and third wave. The hypothesis tested in this study is to investigate the contribution of environmental and demographic factors to the convergence of observed infection rates. Based on panel data of 107 Italian provinces from the first to the third wave, this article uses a spatial autoregressive model (SAR) to analyse the conditional β-convergence of Covid-19 infection rates. The empirical results of this paper show that there is spatial conditional β-convergence in the intensity of infection rates. This means that the contagion in neighbouring areas will affect the contagion in the local area. The age structure and population density of the provinces had a certain promoting effect on the transmission of the infection, depending on the wave analysed. Regarding the observed average temperature, the effects are not very significant and inconsistent. For the first and last wave, the level of pollution is significant in explaining the convergence processes of the infection. We demonstrate that accounting for spatial factors is essential to capture key features of the spread of Covid-19 infection.

How did individual and social aspects influence depression feelings during the pandemic? In this paper, we analyse the data collected through a survey conducted in the second half of 2021 among a convenience sample of Italian adults. The survey was aimed at highlighting how Italians experienced the pandemic and the way they perceived their future. A total of 556 Italians answered the CAWI survey. The analyses of the collected data show that, while having been infected by the virus or having had a family member infected by it did not influence the depression level, other individual characteristics and subjective feelings did. In particular, being female, younger, having had low trust in information delivered by television, no experiences of smart working or remote learning, little support from friends and family, and being unable to imagine the future increased the likelihood to feel higher levels of depression. Being able to imagine the future mediated the relationships of age and smart working or remote learning experiences with depression. The results indicate that, having a lower ability to imagine the future, younger people and individuals who did not work or study remotely have also a greater tendency to feel depressed.

COVID-19 calls for new ways of approaching internationalisation in adult learning and education. Based on experiences gathered during the 2021 virtual Adult Education Academy, this paper identifies challenges in international virtual learning settings in higher education. Such settings involve different levels of digital literacy among participants and moderators, limited access to high-speed internet, different time zones, and difficulties in social interactions. The article presents the didactical and methodological conceptualisation of a virtual setting to overcome these challenges. The concept involves facilitating exchanges between moderators, providing technical support, implementing (a-)synchronous sessions, and establishing a virtual space in which learning materials are created.