Distance Learning and Covid-19 From Students’ Perspective: Do They Have the Skills to Deal With the Unprecedented Situation?

Abstract

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, more than 1,6 billion children worldwide were forced to discontinue face-to-face education and continue with distance learning (OECD, 2020). To many students as well as teachers this was their first experience with distance learning. Students' ability to adapt to distance learning varies and depends on different factors, including individual factors such as the ability to cope with new situations, solve problems and manage their own learning process. In order to successfully deal with the new circumstances in education, it is necessary to work at all levels - including the level of policy development, level of schools as organizations, and at the individual – the student – level. This article focus on the level of the students and look on the distance learning from the perspective of students’ skills, attitudes and ability to adapt to the situation. The aim of this article is to summarize what has been studied so far in different countries about COVID-19 related distance learning and students' difficulties and ability to cope with this situation; and to suggest practices to develop students' skills such as self-management and problem-solving skills to better adapt to new situations in the future.

The Impact of Digitalisation of Higher Education: The Case of Latvia and Nordic-Baltic Region

“…The availability of technological solutions and the professional qualification of teachers both are important for the successful implementation of distance learning [9]. Research shows a need for the long- 2 Elements of AI -https://www.elementsofai.lv/ term monitoring of carried-out development activities of digital skills [10].…”

“…In March 2020, all Latvian HEIs were forced to urgently switch all the studies to some form of distance learning due to the limitations enforced by the state during the Covid-19 pandemic [2]. That was not always digital nor online education.…”

“…That was not always digital nor online education. In Latvia, various forms of learning were implemented in the remote learning process during the pandemic; for example, teachers organised both online video lessons at a specified time (synchronously) and recorded videos with lesson content or videos with comments on frequently asked questions that students could watch at their preferred time (asynchronously), as well as gave students written or practical tasks [2]. The study year 2020/2021 was completely remote for HEIs, and lots of digital education materials were produced to facilitate the studies during this period [15], [16].…”

“…To implement the learning process, academic staff used all available equipment: smartphones, laptops, graphic tablets, desktop computers, and different platforms supporting elearning (e.g., Zoom, MS Teams, Moodle, Google tools) [39]. In the implementation of distance studies, students mentioned such positive aspects as health safety, time savings (opportunity to sleep longer, not wasting time going to/from university), the opportunity to study from anywhere, to plan their own time, and prioritise their activities [2], [36]. Furthermore, remote studies provided opportunities to acquire appropriate study courses for students living in remote regions of Riga and who did not always have the opportunity to participate in on-site classes [4], [36].…”

“…Distance learning in Latvia appeared more than 12 years ago (approximately in 2006), and it successfully existed on an experimental basis for improving the pedagogical skills of teaching staff of the Latvian higher education institutions (HEIs) and preparing reports for international scientific conferences [1]. As in many other countries, distance and remote learning has been the key to sustaining education in Latvia during the shutdown following the Covid-19 pandemic [2]. However, such a shift to digital format also highlighted several issues, e.g., lack of appropriate legislation, insufficient previous experience of academic staff with technological solutions in particular and remote teaching in general [3].…”