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the refusal of many of the participants to attend digital formats. Many of the migrants
attending integration courses had never used a computer before, they were able to
use their smartphones for several social media apps but even the logging-in in a zoom
conference represented a barrier to attend the classes regularly.

3.2.2 THE URGENT UPSKILLING NEED, SUPPORTING EACH OTHER AND
SOLUTIONS FOR NEW TEACHING FORMATS
Parting from the fact that all courses suddenly needed to be moved to digital formats
all state schools in Germany were equipped with hard- and software, state teachers
were offered digital upskilling sessions and the Government invested to combat the
infrastructural difficulties in rural areas. However, most teachers complain that there
was no planed strategy for the upskilling programs and many of the education centers
were expecting from the teachers to decide and create their own digital formats for
their classes with no significant support. State school teachers also complained that in
many regular state schools teachers were working in parallel with different digital plat-
forms/tools making it more difficult for the students to get used to the digital formats.
The main reason for this situation was the lack of digital skills of most teachers and
learners in the classes. During the first months of the pandemic situation almost every
teacher was offered upskilling sessions, guidelines were created and private centers
offered numerous supporting opportunities for their trainers and learners. However,
most trainers review this period as an overwhelming episode with high degree of frus-
tration and incapacity to react. Some teachers also found some positive aspects in this
experience since trainers and learners were supporting each other in the digital im-
plementation as far as they could. The relationship in the classes with the most en-
gaged participants improved and moved from a teacher centered format towards a
more student centered one.

The several upskilling opportunities mentioned above focused mainly in transforming
the face2face teaching solutions into a digital format. Most teachers state currently
that they are able to impart their classes using several webinar solutions such as zoom,
Microsoft meets, Edmodo. Most teachers are using digital boards and digital books or
additional ready materials but they are not able to create any new ones. In order to
motivate learners in the classes and try to prevent from dropping out many teachers
use more games in the classes, especially the ones recommended by the school or the
additional materials. The main problem teachers are facing currently is the lack of time
to prepare their lessons. Teachers need to invest much more time in the transferring
of the face to face curriculum to the digital format and they have almost no time to
search or experiment with new teaching strategies. For this reason, most of them use
the recommended materials of their teaching centers and try to focus individual sup-
port using break down / small teaching groups.

The concept of the flipped classroom: