One of the most successful projects between academics and students since 2017 has been the publication of DEN’s online, a hard copy magazine, and annual book. Whilst the magazine focuses on short blogs and discussions, the books cover longer and academic articles, ranging across local, global, social, political and economic issues.

Given the circumstances that came with the outbreak of COVID-19, we faced a new challenge as on-site activities at the university became impossible. Remotely engaging students was the only way for DEN to continue working on different projects so we developed a new strategy.

By inspiring and encouraging our students, we sought creative and imaginative online approaches to sustain our activities. Academics and students met online weekly from all over the world, discussed various issues and made decisions on how to design, develop and execute our projects, publishing a magazine and an annual book during the pandemic.

We used new technology to our advantage by turning COVID-19 into an opportunity for our students. By looking at local and global activities, our undergraduate and postgraduate students and our alumni around the world collaborated as a team, supported each other and shared their experiences of the global pandemic. The results were inspirational – over 30 articles were published that expressed their experiences of Covid-19, and some were real stories of their local conditions. The publication of these articles represents the voices of our students who were affected by the pandemic worldwide.

The magazine and book projects have become cornerstones of a mentoring strategy to engage and support students at different levels. Hence, mentoring students across academic levels, from master’s to undergraduate, has been a crucial focus of our online experimentation. The academics have used the magazine and the book as tools to mentor, train and encourage our master’s students and alumni to support our undergraduate students. Hence, managing projects and delivering them online were remarkably successful.

Together, staff and students have developed innovative approaches and strategies that turned the pandemic around. The success of the approach has been remarkable, as students’ testimonies demonstrate this.