Security and defence higher education in pandemic times: measures adopted and new perspectives for the future

The pandemic crisis started in the middle of the last academic year and disrupted timetables and programs designed months in advance. This forced all Schools and Universities to re-organize quickly all the didactic activities in a different way according to the new needs. Also, in the field of Security and Defence Higher Education it was necessary to design new models of teaching and training. Officers, in order to be able to operate in national and international very complex contexts, cannot postpone some training and could not lose, in terms of quality, their specialized education. This change was more difficult because their preparation includes theoretical and practical activities. In this paper, we analyze the measures assumed by the University of Turin in cooperation with IT-Army Education and Training Command and School of Applied Studies, for military and civilian students of the Bachelor Degree and Master Degree in Strategic Sciences. The presence of a Digital Learning Environment, already used as support to the face-to-face teaching, was very important and allowed to adopt quite easily flexible digital methodologies in distance, blended and hybrid teaching and learning. Despite this, it was fundamental to support and train teachers for developing more digital competences and producing new interactive materials and to strengthen the infrastructures in terms of hardware, software and updating of the classrooms. We discuss this transition by using students' and teachers' answers to two questionnaires and through the analysis of students' activities, difficulties encountered and solutions found. The outcomes in such a challenging and demanding context are generally positive and offer new opportunities and new perspectives for the future of Security and Defence Higher Education.