2020 was a real challenge for the country's educational system. The quarantine introduced in March 2020 established a new format of interaction - social distance. The faculty FPSC of SumDU also switched to distance learning.
All public events and group classes at the university have been canceled. Instead, lectures, practical and laboratory classes began to be held online, in Zoom, Google Meet, Cisko Webex Meetings, Skype, and others. To ensure that students' academic progress did not deteriorate during the quarantine, lecturers had to update their teaching methodology.
- We have taken into account the recommendations of the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine and university services. Each lecturer produced a specific scenario for teaching the discipline. For some, the synchronous form of teaching became more effective, i.e. working with students in real-time, for others, asynchronous, which takes place through online channels at a time convenient for students," says Svitlana Baranova, Vice Dean for Teaching Methodology at the faculty FPSC.
The synchronic form consists of webinars, videoconferences, a virtual classroom, and online training sessions. The asynchronous form - of massively open online courses with interactive exercises and open access via the Internet, online literature, blogs, forums, chat rooms, and e-mail.
In order to improve qualification but not to reduce the quality of educational activities during the quarantine period, the faculty members constantly take Ukrainian and international online courses. For example: "Emerging Trends & Technologies in the Virtual K-12 Classroom", "Virtual teacher", "Blended Language Learning: Design and Practice for Teachers", "About distance and blended learning", "Distance learning technologies in SumDU", "The potential of social networks to work with the audience during quarantine", "The basics of working in the frame" and others.
Innovative teaching methods such as the distributed hybrid course and the 'flipped classroom' have become more active. Blended or hybrid learning combines traditional, individual, and online learning. The flipped classroom model is a type of blended learning. The main feature is the students' self-studying. In the classroom, under the guidance of the instructor, they do assignments on the topic they learned the day before. That is, the lecturer turns from the main knowledge transmitter into a consultant or coordinator.
In addition, during the quarantine period, students have constant communication with lecturers through personal accounts, messengers, and e-mail. SumDU Mix platform is intensely used.
Of course, there were certain problems and difficulties in the process of training organization. They were primarily related to learning how to work with different programs, platforms, or resources that should be used in the learning process. There were also problems with the technical support of lecturers and students. Everyone also experienced a problem with the low quality of the Internet. Despite the shortcomings, distance learning has stimulated a kind of "update" of the disciplines and enabled lecturers to modernize their teaching technique with the latest technology.
Students, on the other hand, find both positive and negative aspects of distance learning:
- The main advantage of distance learning is saving time, there is no need to waste time on the road, - says Zoreslava Shedenko, a student majoring in Journalism. - There are also enough disadvantages: online discussions are very difficult to conduct, you have to spend more time in front of the computer. There is no opportunity to communicate with groupmates in real life. I understand that health care is more important, so right now I don't want to switch to a full-time form of education. However, I hope that next year the situation will change for the better, and we will be able to return to the usual mode of work.
The faculty FPSC of SumDU also hopes that the quarantine will soon be over and our students will be able to return to their classrooms. Nevertheless, the 2020 challenge was a significant boost to our development, taught us to appreciate time and opportunities, and showed that we are able to cope with a non-standard situation and ensure a continuous and high-quality learning process.
Karyna Panikar, a student of the group ZhT-81