STUDENTS’ EXPERIENCES AND VIEWS OF ONLINE TEACHING AND LEARNING IN HIGHER EDUCATION
Abstract
The Covid-19 pandemic has largely affected the educational process in higher educational institutions across the world and caused a rapid shift to online teaching and learning. Striving to respond to the challenges of providing safety for students and teachers and ensuring continuity of education, the majority of university teachers in Macedonia have been closed for almost two years and for this time they have been shutting down the classroom teaching and embracing digital academic experience.
In this paper we surveyed students' experiences and opinions about online teaching in Macedonian higher education. We conducted two online surveys, first survey in the summer semester of the academic year 2020/2021 and we repeated second survey in 2021/22. Both surveys included students from two higher education institutions that prepare pedagogues, elementary school teachers and educators in preschool institutions: the Institute of Pedagogy (IP) at the Faculty of Philosophy, UKIM in Skopje and the Faculty of Educational Sciences (FES) at the Goce Delcev University in Shtip.The research is based on empirical and qualitative data obtained by a questionnaire that was electronically distributed and completed by a selected sample of students (88 students in 2021 and 105 students in 2022). The survey questions of different type are focused on several issues: student access to digital equipment and their computer skills, student interest to attend online classes, quality of delivery of online instruction, communication with teachers, benefits and weaknesses of online teaching, effectiveness of online learning. The analysis employs both quantitative and qualitative approach to study the perceptions of students, and the findings are shown by narrative description, tables and graphs. They are expected to give an insight into the students’ needs by identifying their perspective on the quality of ongoing online academic activities, as well as to contribute to better understanding of the challenges facing university teaching and learning today.
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References
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