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 is to provide a basis for future research on the impact that the COVID-19 situation has had on the educational process at the above-mentioned universities, as well as to assist educational providers in foreseeing and eliminating the possible problems of lecturers when establishing an online educational environment. Some conclusions are drawn from the interviews that offer potential for further research in educational science, because many difficulties from the students’ point of view are related to their social status, lack of social contact, technical problems with Internet connections, the carrying out of lectures and the exams of students. The students’ answers are categorized, and each category is described.
Educational materials are a key component of the educational process. In this respect, it is an instrument that is essential throughout the education pro-cess and where quality plays a key role. The quality of educational materials must be assessed in terms of expertise and timeliness, and in terms of ob-servance and application of didactic and pedagogical principles. Only high-quality educational materials bring greater efficiency to the entire education process. An essential aspect of assessing the quality of educational materials is also their ergonomics. That is, assessing whether the educational material works in accordance with the author's ideas. The principle of ergonomics, which includes comprehensibility and user-friendliness, is already common-ly used in the design of web pages or advertising flyers. Their aim is also to communicate information and lead the attention of the reader. This article is devoted to the definition of the methodology by which we evaluate this er-gonomics for educational materials and based on research we are able to formulate recommendations in this area.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.