This paper is dedicated to the higher education institutions shifting towards distance learning processes due to the global pandemic situation caused by COVID-19 in 2020. The paper covers the pandemic situation in Poland generally, analyzing governmental ordinances and tracking the gradual extension of restrictions for educational institutions. The purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of Experience, Enjoyment, Computer Anxiety, and Self-Efficacy on students’ acceptance of shifting education to distance learning. The study tested and used the adapted General Extended Technology Acceptance Model for E-Learning (GETAMEL) in the context of coronavirus pandemic. The partial least squares method of structural equation modeling was employed to test the proposed research model. The study utilizes an online survey to obtain data from 1692 Polish undergraduate and graduate students in both full- and part-time study. The dataset was analyzed using SmartPLS 3 software. Results showed that the best predictor of student’s acceptance of shifting education to distance learning is Enjoyment, followed by Self-Efficacy. Both Perceived Ease of Use and Perceived Usefulness predict student’s Attitude Towards Using and Intention to Use the distance learning. The findings improve understanding regarding the acceptance of distance learning and this work is therefore of particular interest to teachers and practitioners of education.

The article deals with distance education, which as a teaching method had to be suddenly introduced in schools and higher education institutions as a result of the global pandemic situation. The paper captures the second wave of Poland’s pandemic situation in relation to global circumstances and the methods of conducting distance learning used across the globe. The purpose of this study was to investigate first-year students’ expectations about the education shift to distance learning. GETAMEL, which is the adapted General Extended Technology Acceptance Model for E-Learning, was used in the study. The study analyzed the influence of Experience, Subjective Norms, Enjoyment, Computer Anxiety, and Self-Efficacy on students’ expectations in the context of distance learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. To test the research model presented during the research, The Partial Least Squares method of Structural Equation Modeling was used. An online survey was created to conduct the research, which collected data from 670 Polish first-year undergraduate students. The acquired data were analyzed using the SmartPLS 3 software. The results of the research indicated that the most important factors that influence the feelings of students and can convince them to change from teaching in the classroom to teaching in the distance learning model are the feeling of pleasure in this form of education and a sense of self-efficacy. The results of this study may be of particular interest to education practitioners, including teachers, and a starting point for further research on e-learning models, including, in particular, the understanding of students’ expectations regarding distance learning.

The recent emergence of a new coronavirus (2019-nCoV) has gained a high cover in public media and worldwide news. This caused a viral pneumonia in thousands of people in Wuhan, a central city of China. This short communication gives a brief introduction on how the demand for information on this new epidemic is reported through Google Trends. Author draw conclusions on current infodemiological data on 2019-nCov using three main search queries: coronavirus, SARS and MERS. Two approaches are set. First is worldwide perspective, second is Chinese perspective. Chinese perspective reveals that in China, this disease in the beginning days was more often referred to SARS then to general coronaviruses, whereas worldwide, since the beginning is more often referred to coronaviruses.

Digital and media literacies refer to a specific set of skills and abilities. The range of these skills as they concern the educational process has been broadly discussed. In this paper, we analyzed the Polish educational system to determine the scope of the sorts of digital skills young people and students should achieve in order to be considered digitally and media literate. We compared sets of recommendations from the last ten years issued by different national governmental and nonprofit organizations for the Polish education system. We identified a set of skills that should be expected to be possessed by young people and students during their education. Additionally, we discussed results regarding the situation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and the shift from regular education to distance learning.

In modern and developing economic systems, Knowledge Management (KM) is considered to be one of the most important activities of almost any organization. KM process at universities includes didactic processes, among which we distinguish the process of individualization of education. Such process requires a large amount of information to be processed both by university workers and students. This paper suggests that Knowledge Graphs are a technology that facilitates and enhances KM processes at universities and gives an extended review of a Knowledge Graph phenomenon.

The COVID-19 pandemic made higher education institutions switch to distance learning in a very short period of time. The situation was challenging not only for universities themselves but also for the students and teachers. Some universities did not have the means, in terms of infrastructure, for a smooth transition to distance learning. Some teachers were not prepared for the extensive usage of ICT in their work. The pandemic developed dynamically, and it made it extremely difficult for both governments and universities to plan and implement firm solutions on how to conduct the teaching process. The presented paper focuses on the situation of Polish higher education institutions between March 2020 and March 2022. It reviews legal acts and ordinances introduced in the stated period, which focused on the sustainability of the teaching process, countermeasures for the spread of COVID-19 and the implementation of distance learning. The case of the University of Economics in Katowice, Poland, is used to show the correlation between governmental legal acts and those introduced by the university as part of the COVID -19 spread prevention and teaching process support.

Purpose This paper aims to consider the question of changes brought to consumers’ trust and security issues by the implementation of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in electronic commerce. Design/methodology/approach Online shopping policies in Poland and Ukraine are compared from the perspective of four factors as follows: application of terms of service and privacy policy, usage of online payment systems, presence in price comparison engines and grade of secure sockets layer security certificates. Comparison is conducted within the framework of three research questions (complemented by eight hypotheses) set to reveal whether: policies of personal data protection and server security for online stores in both countries are the same; all online stores in both countries obey the existing e-commerce rules; e-commerce policies in the two countries differ significantly. The sample for analysis contains 40 Polish and 40 Ukrainian online stores, representing four industries, namely, electronics, entertainment, fashion and goods for children. Findings The research allowed to reveal major differences in the privacy policy of the two countries, caused, mainly, by the absence of GDPR in Ukraine. It also disclosed much stronger cooperation of online stores and price comparison engines in Poland compared to Ukraine. At the same time, research results allow to state that server security in both countries is on the same rather high level and that online stores use transparent and safe methods of online payment. Research limitations/implications This research opens a way to other, expanded observations which will include more countries and larger scopes of data. Its main limitation is that GDPR influence is only studied in two countries, not in all countries where it is implemented. Originality/value This research contributes from security and trust perspectives by analyzing the situation in two countries as follows: the EU member (Poland) and a non-EU country (Ukraine). The value of exploring the situation of Ukrainian e-commerce consists of understanding how online stores function without implementing the GDPR. Observation of shopbots application allows drawing an important conclusion of the necessity for online stores to cooperate with such services. It was also revealed that consumers’ trust in both countries depends a lot on the payment methods applied by an online store and on the ease of use of these methods.

This study examines the possibility of correlation between the data on human mobility restrictions and the COVID-19 infection rates in two European countries: Poland and Portugal. The aim of this study is to verify the correlation and causation between mobility changes and the infection spread as well as to investigate the impact of the introduced restrictions on changes in human mobility. The data were obtained from Google Community Mobility Reports, Apple Mobility Trends Reports, and The Humanitarian Data Exchange along with other reports published online. All the data were organized in one dataset, and three groups of variables were distinguished: restrictions, mobility, and intensity of the disease. The causal-comparative research design method is used for this study. The results show that in both countries the state restrictions reduced human mobility, with the strongest impact in places related to retail and recreation, grocery, pharmacy, and transit stations. At the same time, the data show that the increase in restrictions had strong positive correlation with stays in residential places both in Poland and Portugal.