The use of technological devices has changed the way individuals interact with their university environment. This paper examines the use of a smart context as a link between individuals and their university environment through an exemplification of the urgent problems deriving from different domains and technological systems, as well as of information and communication devices employed in university teaching-learning contexts, to improve the quality of higher education and individuals’ cultural life. When does the university become “smart”? It is not sufficient that universities define themselves as smart places to underline the main challenges they must face in their efforts to become and remain smart. The article recognizes a university as a “smart” institution when it has its roots in the understanding and critical awareness of the basic knowledge, in the identification of the more realistic competencies and the search for the meanings of a “smart university community” that pursues high quality. The paper concludes with an account of the experience of the ICT Centre of the University of Ferrara, who try to achieve these goals, implies the adoption of innovative perspectives, and discusses the building of a new culture putting in the middle a “smart university” and its cultural principles.

The main objective of this paper is to examine the results of an observational study on the use of Facebook by adolescents in an informal context. The authors describe the preliminary results of the research and analyze the significant variables that contribute to improve the current, important debate about the social network as a source of information and knowledge in the matching of learning in informal and formal contexts. The above analysis is the premise for the illustration of the potential and advantages that could follow from the use of social networking in everyday teaching. The core problem of the renewal of teaching today is in fact the centre of the debate on an integrated use of ICT in teaching-learning process as re-structuring factor of the action learning systems in formal settings with respect to the cognitive, affective, socio-relational and psycho-motor taxonomic components and implications.

Over recent decades, the process of teaching/learning has become ever more complex. The increasing school population, and the advent of new IT applications and of networking, together with the requirement for continuous training, have comprehensively overturned the simplistic approach to the process that had previously been pursued. As a result, the evaluation of the process has also been overhauled -having once been a selective practice, it is now considered to be an activity that generates quality in teaching. However, it appears that the tools used to carry out evaluations have been lagging behind in terms of innovation. In an effort to close this gap, the authors here offer a study of the possibility of using closed tests that can be analysed in terms of rigorous algorithms, are replicable through automated software and use the concept map structure in a variety of ways.

Over recent decades, the process of teaching/learning has become ever more complex. The increasing school population, and the advent of new IT applications and of networking, together with the requirement for continuous training, have comprehensively overturned the simplistic approach to the process that had previously been pursued. As a result, the evaluation of the process has also been overhauled -having once been a selective practice, it is now considered to be an activity that generates quality in teaching. However, it appears that the tools used to carry out evaluations have been lagging behind in terms of innovation. In an effort to close this gap, the authors here offer a study of the possibility of using closed tests that can be analysed in terms of rigorous algorithms, are replicable through automated software and use the concept map structure in a variety of ways.

Italy was the first European country which has been affected by the fast spread of SARS-Cov-2, leading to a general lockdown that started on March 9, 2020, only two weeks after the diagnosis of the Italian patient zero. Such lockdown concerned also the school, that is, the social institution which suffered —and keeps suffering— the most the negative effects of the national restrictions whether because of the lack of precise indications regarding the didactics after the suspension of in-class activities or because of the deficiencies and criticalities that it has been facing since ages. It was only in April when teachers could eventually resort to e-learning; though, due to the lack of both methodological indications and adequate study plans, each school acted autonomously and the best they could. In most cases, it was the teachers’ initiative and individual efforts that led to a successful didactics. As a matter of fact, teachers tried any kind of strategy to keep in touch actively with their students, as testified through the technique of the focus group. Although, in disagreement with the message of hope spread during the lockdown, not everything has gone well; that is, the virus has highlighted a chronical situation of fragility and vulnerability, whose negative consequences and effects seem to persist also in the future. This essay aims at analysing what happened during the first Italian lockdown framing the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on a sociocultural dimension. For this purpose, I will take into account the main contextual factors that have contributed to worsen —from the didactic and teaching perspective— the consequences of the spread of the virus.