Emotional and Educational Accompaniment through Dialogic Literary Gatherings: A Volunteer Project for Families Who Suffer Digital Exclusion in the Context of COVID-19

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments: sustainability-1073118

Title: Emotional and Educational Accompaniment through Dialogic Literary Gatherings: A Volunteer Project for Families who Suffer Digital Exclusion in the Context of COVID-19

1. Please illustrate your research framework with figures.
2. You(authors) need to well- illustrate your viewpoint by relating your own methodology.
3. Figures can help you to explain how the research work and provide international readership to get a better understanding of your academic work.
4. Make it more clear, please. Purposes of the study? Research model?What model exactly?

     5.   Please reconfirm the Analysis of the Data

     6.   Update your references, please (from 2015-2020)

Suggested references:

1.English e-learning in the virtual classroom and the factors that influence ESL (English as a Second Language): Taiwanese citizens’ acceptance and use of the Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment

2. An Empirical Study of How the Learning Attitudes of College Students toward English E-Tutoring Websites Affect Site Sustainability

3. Designing a System for English Evaluation and Teaching Devices: A PZB and TAM Model Analysis

4.Application of Information Technology in Preschool Aesthetic Teaching from the Perspective of Sustainable Management

5.The optimal setting of A/B exam papers without item pools: A hybrid approach of IRT and BGP

6. Applying the UTAUT to Understand Factors Affecting the Use of English E-Learning Websites in Taiwan

7. Interactive Instructional Device

8. Teaching the right things and teaching the things right: Professional development for mariners

9.  Developing a System for English Evaluation and Teaching Devices

Author Response

Dear Editor and reviewers,

We want to express our gratitude to you for considering our paper “Emotional and Educational Accompaniment through Dialogic Literary Gatherings: A Volunteer Project for Families who Suffer Digital Exclusion in the Context of COVID-19” for its publication in Sustainability journal. We would also like to thank the reviewers for their very relevant and enriching comments on our paper. We have carefully considered their feedback and we have made the proposed changes in order to increase the quality of the paper.

To facilitate you with reviewing the new version, we provide responses to the reviewers’ comments in this letter (see below), and we have uploaded a new version with the tracked changes in MS Word. If it is needed, we can also attach a certificate of professional proofreading of our paper.

We remain at your entire disposal for any further requirement that could be needed.

Yours sincerely,

The authors

Reviewer 1

We would like to thank to the reviewer 1 his/her suggestions and comments that have helped our paper to enrich its quality.

1. Please illustrate your research framework with figures.
2. You(authors) need to well- illustrate your viewpoint by relating your own methodology.
3. Figures can help you to explain how the research work and provide international readership to get a better understanding of your academic work.

We thank to the reviewer for these suggestions regarding illustrating our research framework, methodology and work with figures. To make clearer the research framework, we added in the first version the Figure 1, that is explained also in the text. On the other hand, and following reviewer’s recommendation, we have added a figure in the new version in which the research process (our own methodology) is clarified (see Figure 2 in p. 8)

Figure 2. Visual representation of the research model and project procedure of "Books that Bring People Together".

4. Make it more clear, please. Purposes of the study? Research model? What model exactly?

We thank to the reviewer for this comment. We have remarked the purposes of our study (general and specific objectives) in p. 6 (lines 278-293):

About the purposes of our study, the general objective we propose for our investigation is: to carry out an impact study of an educational and emotional support project aimed at families affected by the digital divide derived from the current confinement situation, allowing for the elaboration of improvement proposals. We likewise propose the following specific objectives: a) to study the educational and emotional impact of educational pills among volunteers; b) to study the effectiveness of educational and emotional support through Dialogic Literary Gatherings experienced by families (from the volunteers’ point of view); c) to analyze the evaluative impact this type of action exerts on volunteering; d) to study the satisfaction level of families and participants involved in this initiative from volunteers’ perspective; e) to detect adverse educational situations experienced by families affected by digital exclusion using previous scientific literature and f) to develop a series of proposals for improvement of these situations based on the current intervention.

About “research model”, we didn’t mention this in the original version. However, with the new figure added to the new version, we have clarified our research process.

5. Please reconfirm the Analysis of the Data

We thank to the reviewer for his/her suggestion. To reconfirm the robustness of the analysis, we have justified the selection of statistical methods used in our research (see p. 9, lines 401-404)

Considering the purposes of our study and the sample size, this Student’s T-test and correlations analysis was the most accurate, following Pallant [62], providing statistically significant results aligned with previous literature.

On the other hand, we added the validity of the results obtained though the scales used in the first version uploaded.

See p. 7, lines 334-336 for the whole questionnaire:

The validity of these questionnaires was high: it reached a kappa level of agreement among expert reviewers greater than 0.81, thus corresponding with a high level of agreement. A Cronbach’s alpha of validity was carried out on the sample: it attained a score of 0.79, which is considered medium-high.

1. 7 Lines 344-345 for the scale on Formative and Motivational Impact:

an agreement of 0.86 was reached on Cronbach's alpha.

1. 7 Lines 352-353 for the scale on Evaluation of the development of volunteering skills

Regarding its reliability, a score of 0.82 was obtained in Cronbach's alpha.

1. 8 Line 358 for the scale on Satisfaction of families

A reliability score of 0.74 was obtained in Cronbach's alpha

And we have added a short paragraph in which the validity of the results is also discussed (see p. 8, lines 359-363)

About the validity of the results obtained though these scales, as it will be shown in Results section, statistical significance is reached in the variables relationships and comparison, and, as it will be considered in the Discussion section, our results are aligned with previous literature on the topics analyzed in this research.

6. Update your references, please (from 2015-2020)

We thank to the reviewer the suggested references. We have added the following references, that have enriched the theoretical framework of our paper:

Fan, R.-J.D.; Tan, P.J.B. Application of Information Technology in Preschool Aesthetic Teaching from the Perspective of Sustainable Management. Sustainability 2019, 11(7), 2179, https://doi.org/10.3390/su11072179

Tan, P. J. B., & Hsu, M.-H. Designing a System for English Evaluation and Teaching Devices: A PZB and TAM Model Analysis. Eurasia Journal of Mathematics, Science and Technology Education 2018, 14(6), 2107-2119. https://doi.org/10.29333/ejmste/86467

Tan, P.J.B. An Empirical Study of How the Learning Attitudes of College Students toward English E-Tutoring Websites Affect Site Sustainability. Sustainability 2019, 11(6), 1748; https://doi.org/10.3390/su11061748

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

An excellent article and a project to be spread and compared internationally

Author Response

Dear Editor and reviewers,

We want to express our gratitude to you for considering our paper “Emotional and Educational Accompaniment through Dialogic Literary Gatherings: A Volunteer Project for Families who Suffer Digital Exclusion in the Context of COVID-19” for its publication in Sustainability journal. We would also like to thank the reviewers for their very relevant and enriching comments on our paper. We have carefully considered their feedback and we have made the proposed changes in order to increase the quality of the paper.

To facilitate you with reviewing the new version, we provide responses to the reviewers’ comments in this letter (see below), and we have uploaded a new version with the tracked changes in MS Word. If it is needed, we can also attach a certificate of professional proofreading of our paper.

We remain at your entire disposal for any further requirement that could be needed.

Yours sincerely,

The authors

Reviewer 2

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

An excellent article and a project to be spread and compared internationally

We deeply thank to the reviewer 2 his/her encouraging comments on our paper.

Reviewer 3 Report

Participants: There is adequate information about the volunteers, but little information is given about the families. There would be a lack of data such as number of families, number of children, age of children and parents, course in which the children are, for example

Measures: It is necessary to inform that the validity that has been obtained is of content

Procedure: There is a lack of data on the duration of the intervention, the number of sessions and the duration of the sessions. Presumably they were done online

Author Response

Dear Editor and reviewers,

We want to express our gratitude to you for considering our paper “Emotional and Educational Accompaniment through Dialogic Literary Gatherings: A Volunteer Project for Families who Suffer Digital Exclusion in the Context of COVID-19” for its publication in Sustainability journal. We would also like to thank the reviewers for their very relevant and enriching comments on our paper. We have carefully considered their feedback and we have made the proposed changes in order to increase the quality of the paper.

To facilitate you with reviewing the new version, we provide responses to the reviewers’ comments in this letter (see below), and we have uploaded a new version with the tracked changes in MS Word. If it is needed, we can also attach a certificate of professional proofreading of our paper.

We remain at your entire disposal for any further requirement that could be needed.

Yours sincerely,

The authors

Reviewer 3

Participants: There is adequate information about the volunteers, but little information is given about the families. There would be a lack of data such as number of families, number of children, age of children and parents, course in which the children are, for example

We thank to the reviewer for this comment. We have added more information on the families and children who participate in the experience (see p.7, lines 312-316)

Regarding the characteristics of the families, 73 of them, with 100 children in total, are represented in the volunteers’ responses. The children that participated in the activity were 6-12 years old (median = 9 years old), studying from the first grade of primary education (6 years old) to the sixth grade of Primary Education (12 years old).

Measures: It is necessary to inform that the validity that has been obtained is of content

We thank to the reviewer for this relevant suggestion. We added the validity of the results obtained though the scales used in the first version uploaded.

See p. 7, lines 334-336 for the whole questionnaire:

The validity of these questionnaires was high: it reached a kappa level of agreement among expert reviewers greater than 0.81, thus corresponding with a high level of agreement. A Cronbach’s alpha of validity was carried out on the sample: it attained a score of 0.79, which is considered medium-high.

1. 7 Lines 344-345 for the scale on Formative and Motivational Impact:

an agreement of 0.86 was reached on Cronbach's alpha.

1. 7 Lines 352-353 for the scale on Evaluation of the development of volunteering skills

Regarding its reliability, a score of 0.82 was obtained in Cronbach's alpha.

1. 8 Line 358 for the scale on Satisfaction of families

A reliability score of 0.74 was obtained in Cronbach's alpha

Moreover, we have added a short paragraph in which the validity of the results is also discussed (see p. 8, lines 359-363)

About the validity of the results obtained though these scales, as it will be shown in Results section, statistical significance is reached in the variables relationships and comparison, and, as it will be considered in the Discussion section, our results are aligned with previous literature on the topics analyzed in this research.

Also, to reconfirm the robustness of the analysis, we have justified the selection of statistical methods used in our research (see p. 9, lines 401-404):

Considering the purposes of our study and the sample size, this Student’s T-test and correlations analysis was the most accurate, following Pallant [62] providing statistically significant results aligned with previous literature.

Procedure: There is a lack of data on the duration of the intervention, the number of sessions and the duration of the sessions. Presumably they were done online

We thank to the reviewer for this comment, and we totally agree with the need of being more specific with the description of the intervention. We have added more information on the procedure with the duration of the intervention, the number of sessions and the duration of the sessions (p. 8, lines 365-369).

The intervention was carried out from 1st June to 10 July 2020. It consisted in telematic (online and/or by phone) emotional accompaniment through books, in the form of Dialogic Literary Gatherings. In general, the intervention was carried out in 4 sessions of 45 minutes with 3 children each.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Good  job