Innovations in Online Education in Post-COVID-19

Acta Informatica Pragensia, 2021

The surge in interest in online teaching increased not only due to the pandemic. It had been growing even before. The main objective of this study is therefore to explore how online teaching has changed. It addresses experience and opinions of educators of Czech and Slovak universities in the period from the first days of the COVID-19 lockdown (March 2020) till the peak of its second wave (May 2021). To examine the impact of disharmony, the authors investigated Czech and Slovak university educators' activities and behaviour during their online teaching. A descriptive statistics approach was applied. A total of 172 educators participated in our online survey. Our results reveal that online teaching has become a fundamental component of their education. Our outcomes demonstrate their low preparation for this unexpected event as well as their quick adaptation to the new situation. Additionally, data indicate that their difficulties reconcile their previous experience and teaching practices with online teaching. Finally, they show that about half of them are still sceptical about the future of online education and dream of return to traditional teaching. Our results also indicate that universities should facilitate their efforts in developing online education methodology and overall support to their educators.

7th International Conference on Higher Education Advances (HEAd'21), 2021

The world is currently experiencing the covid-19 pandemic that has been going on for almost a year and which has transformed the way of carrying out the economic activities that support contemporary societies. The education sector is precisely an example of this abrupt change. The face-to-face teaching-learning process was converted to an online format, so students, teachers, schools and families had to adapt immediately to this transformation. There was no time to provide schools and persons with digital equipment and tools, nor with educational agents for training oriented to the practice of online teaching. Everyone had to do their best, adapting, learning autonomously and with their peers and solving their own problems. This research was developed with the support of the case study methodology in a Portuguese educational institution and aims to understand, through the Dynamic Digital Competence Reference Framework (DigComp), the evolution of students in terms of digital skills i...

Przegląd Krytyczny, 2022

This article presents the system of higher education (HE) in Poland and the role of remote (and later online) learning in education with the focus on changes induced as the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The analysis begins with a historical background that shows how higher education has been changing after the political transformation of the 1989, and proceeds with a discussion about the conditions in which remote learning emerged. On the one hand, these conditions relate to the existing programmes that e-learning offers-the tools. On the other hand, they refer to the level of digital preparedness-the skills. The article is meant to be descriptive and combines didactic (both institutional and student-related) and administrative perspective of responding to COVID-19. The article analyses how the Polish HE system managed the transition to online teaching caused by the pandemic.

Journal of Economics, 2021

With the declaration of a pandemic caused by the Covid-19 virus by the WHO (World Health Organization) in 2020 and the quarantines that followed, in many countries, including the Republic of North Macedonia, one of the most affected sectors was education. Many universities have discontinued physical attendance, closed classrooms, and switched to online teaching using a variety of virtual platforms. The complete transformation of the educational process in terms of online teaching, had a huge impact on the work of higher education institutions, but also the adaptation of the new conditions by the teaching staff and students. Everyone has experienced the transition from classroom learning to online teaching and learning in different ways. There was a need to purchase additional equipment, better internet, but also to adapt all family members to the new working and living conditions. Therefore, the purpose of researching this paper is to identify the advantages, disadvantages and satisfaction of using online teaching platforms through the prism of higher education institutions, professors and students. The survey will be conducted by submitting two anonymous questionnaires through the online platform docs.google.com. The questionnaire related to higher education institutions will be submitted to the Vice-Rectors for Teaching at all universities in the Republic of North Macedonia, while the questionnaire related to students will be distributed to students at all universities through student unions. The results of the research will be presented summarically. The paper will include a comparative analysis of the problems, opportunities and expectations of online teaching from the perspective of higher education institutions and students.

World Journal of Educational Research

The whole world population witnesses changes that are happening due to COVID-19 pandemic. One of the greatest changes is shown in the manner of conducting the educational process that has been transferred from traditional onsite to online. This paper analyses what are advantages and what are disadvantages of online teaching in higher education in Croatia, but it is applicable to all levels of education system. As approximately one year has passed since first lockdown and consequently closing all educational institutions, some experience is gained. This paper will try to systematize most of the findings that practice of online education has shown. In a few words, some advantages of quality online teaching are: low expenses, timesaving, learning at one’s own pace, motivation, communication, attention etc. Disadvantages of online teaching are: lack of social face-to-face contact, extreme exposure to screens, all sorts of distractions due to inappropriate work environment, inadequate te...

13TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OF EDUCATION, RESEARCH AND INNOVATION, CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS, ICERI, 2020

The COVID-19 pandemic challenges all segments of society and calls for rapid and effective interventions in health-care system, business, the economy and the education system. In the context of higher education, the doctoral level is specific due primarily to its organizational and program characteristics. The goal of this paper is to assess the success of the implementation of consultation segment and teaching process at University North Postgraduate Doctoral Study in Media and Communication, which continued with the Program despite the situation in which the entire education system in Croatia migrated to distance learning practically in a day. The goal is also to show that digital competencies and skills of professors and students are key to the successful implementation of distance learning. Investing in mastering these skills and raising them to a higher level is the key to a successful education of the future. Such conclusion is confirmed by two key documents crucial for our research-UNESCO ICT Competency Framework for Teachers (2018) and especially Bologna Digital 2020 White Paper on Digitalisation in the European Higher Education Area (2019). The later emphasizes that Europe needs new directions and visions for a contemporary higher education in digital age. Digitalisation is therefore not just an extra challenge, but also an efficient tool capable of detecting the key challenges of 21 st century higher education. The research utilizes an interview technique conducted by way of synchronous communication, via videoconference and telephone. Through videoconferencing, a semi-structured group interview method was implemented on a sample of 43 doctoral students divided into two groups. In the first group, which represents the first year of study, 23 doctoral students have participated in the interview. In the second group, which represents the second year of study, 20 doctoral students have participated. The semi-structured individual interview method was conducted by telephone on a sample of five professors teaching at doctoral Program. Research results show that the situation caused by COVID-19 pandemic sped up certain processes in the areas of higher education that anyway desperately call for a change and are especially highlighted in the above mentioned documents. Research also points to the need for reorganization of doctoral study programmes, particularly in the context of methods and approaches to the research segment. Additional interventions are needed in transfer skills workshops planning, all aiming at the increase of scientific and technical information literacy of doctoral candidates. Furthermore, results show that certain ECTS generating obligations included in doctoral study programme (such as working visit to some foreign University) are made much easier precisely by to modern ICT technologies. Although the doctoral level of studying substantially differs from other two education cycles, it cannot be the justification for the fact that doctoral-level specific research of necessary digital adaptations is scarce. This work aims at filling the research void and offers guidelines for adjusting the doctoral level of studying to challenges and demands of digital age. We will also show that digital transformation changes not only the educational system, but also economic, cultural and social surrounding, which makes new/digital skills 'conditio sine qua non' for an active and fulfilling participation in this new reality.

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research), 2022

IntechOpen eBooks, 2023

The pandemic year 2020 has led to significant changes in all areas of life. Education was no exception. Due to the closure of schools and universities during the lockdown, educational systems worldwide had to be switched overnight, from face-to-face to a completely virtual education model without prior preparation. The study conducted in Montenegro, based on interviews and a survey, collected data on the basis of which it provided an insight into how the teaching staff of Montenegrin universities coped with the newly created circumstances. The aim of this primary research is to determine the challenges faced by teachers and students in the Montenegrin higher education system regarding their implementation of online teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. It focuses on the digital competence of the teaching staff, challenges in applying digital technology, opinions regarding online assessments and students' experiences with online learning. Despite the presented challenges all teachers experienced, the research confirmed that this was a unique experience that brought new opportunities and contributed to improving the teachers' ability to use new technologies. It is to be expected that this unfortunate situation will trigger the development of various mechanisms for modernizing the way of providing knowledge in the future.

Education Sciences

The article points out some of the challenges faced by students at the University of Ostrava, Comenius University in Bratislava and Al-Farabi Kazakh National University, who had almost no previous practice in online teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic situation. The students from the mentioned universities were interviewed to share their experiences with online teaching and learning during the COVID-19 lockdown. In this paper, qualitative pedagogical research in the local conditions of the three mentioned universities is used, with the processing of answers of selected students who were interviewed as an available sample. The students were also asked to describe their impressions of this situation from their social and personal points of view. The focus is on the positive and negative aspects, boundaries, and problems of online university teaching during the pandemic situation, as well as changes in the personal life of the students. The aim of this introductory small-scale study ...

International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health

The study tried to analyze the implication of one year of online education in the Romanian education system. To achieve this goal, the authors of this study analyzed all the levels of education, primary education, lower secondary education, upper secondary education, and even the early childhood system, but also one of the smallest Romanian universities, considered representative for grade 1 universities representing 60% of the Romanian universities. The study is based on four online questionnaires for investigation, first with more than 2500 respondents from the primary and secondary Romanian education system, and the other three applied to more than 800 students and professors from the University of Petroșani. The investigation took place during 29 January 2021 and 11 February 2021. The authors had investigated the main feature of a standard online or a classical e-learning solution, such as the meeting solution or the video conference software, the collaborative work, such as hom...