Non-traditional students: experiences in Pandemic as a base for planning new inclusive actions

Universities, as other organizations, during the Covid Pandemic were forced to move online a panoply of activities.This new constraint dramatically disrupted the traditional teaching settings and generated many drawbacks in students’ learning experiences (Arstovnik et al., 2020) but at the same time they represented also unexpected new possibilities for those that usually were not able to attend lessons. Non traditional students (Finnegan, Merrill & Thunborg, 2014), an heterogeneus category encompassing mature students involved in family commitments and a full time work, represented potential beneficiaries of this shift as the opportunity to watch recorded lessons or share online teaching sessions configured a new way to be part of the university life. But to what extent did this new situation represent a real opportunity in their lives? And which kind of disadvantages – like the difficulty to create new networks (Raaper, Brown & Llewellyn, 2021) - did it entail? This contribute will present some considerations on this issue through on a exploratory study based on 14 narrative interviews (Merrill & West, 2009) realized after the first pandemic semester. The interviews were prepared and managed by students of the Master Degree in Human Resource Management under my supervision and were addressed to their “non traditional” colleagues that volountereed for this study. Our preliminary considerations are now being used to plan new inclusive actions dedicated to non traditional students for the next academic year.