Students on Learning Emotional Intelligence Techniques via ICT and Gamification: Some of the Findings of the Pol-com Project

While the pandemic served as a disrupter for all aspects of life, including educational practices, however, the pandemic also served as an impetus for accelerated learning. Higher education and vocational education teachers have learned to use various information and communications technology (ICT) tools. At least some of the teachers before the pandemic had been reluctant to use due to traditional settings in education or just sincerely had not believed these tools to be useful. This reluctance, maybe sometimes fear, and quite often - a genuine belief in the merit of personal interaction in class - was more prominent for teachers in social sciences or humanities. Nevertheless, due to the pandemic, the practices for teaching and also fostering learning were promptly disrupted and then - changed. On the one hand, the educational landscape in higher education has changed dramatically in recent years. On the other hand, it may be argued that the pendulum has already swung much too far towards ICT domination in the study process for almost all the subjects taught. Even if there is no doubt that these, ICT tools are useful and efficient for acquiring knowledge-orientated and facts-based competencies (which has been evidenced by many studies), it is worthwhile to examine whether the same also applies to the acquisition of other competencies. Namely, for acquiring competencies associated with communication, including emotional intelligence. It is worth noting that law enforcement officers in their professional activities are constantly exposed to stressful, high-pressure situations. However, the field lacks robust attention, and research regarding the place, role, and format of emotional intelligence techniques in their pre-service and in-service training to help them to get equipped to deal with those high-pressure situations. During the implementation of the KA220-VET - Cooperation partnerships in vocational education and training project: A developmental and educational platform and gamified tools for training police officers and similar professionals, with respect to communications, it was identified that the professional field of law enforcement is not yet examined significantly from that perspective (1st phase, 1st quarter of 2024). Then the empirical study (2nd phase, 2nd quarter of 2024; based on experts’/educators’ perspectives) showed that there was a great demand for such techniques. The 3rd phase (4th quarter of 2024) is dedicated to examining the perspective of students/future law enforcement officers (the study is outlined in greater detail in the paper further on).