e-Learning in Higher Institutions and Secondary Schools during Covid-19: Crisis Solving and Future Perspectives

Abstract

Background: The pandemic of Covid-19 brought significant changes to the education system and forcibly accelerated the process of digitizing teaching. Students and educators had to adapt to the new way of education, facing challenges such as technical problems and a lack of technical skills and social contact. Objectives: The purpose of the paper was to explore the attitudes of the university and high school educators and students towards the pandemic’s impact on digitization in teaching. Methods/Approach: Data were collected through a questionnaire distributed to university and high school educators and students in Croatia, Poland, Serbia and Germany in the field of accounting, finance, trade, tourism, and other areas of interest, resulting in 2,897 responses. The results were analyzed using descriptive statistics and non-parametric tests. Results: The research showed that: 1) high school students were less optimistic about the positive impact of the pandemic on applying digital tools in teaching than university students, 2) educators generally prefer traditional exams, while students generally prefer e-exams, 3) a higher proportion of university respondents believe that e-learning should be used as an important addition to traditional teaching when compared to high school respondents. Conclusions: The pandemic has changed how the teaching process will be performed, but we should learn from experience and address the issues with e-learning.

Investigating the Impact of COVID-19 on E-Learning: Country Development and COVID-19 Response

“…COVID-19 resulted in nationwide school closures in most countries, most of which lasted at least 10 weeks [14]. Children and students had to rely more on their resources to continue learning remotely via the Internet and other media, despite concerted efforts by the education community to ensure continuity of learning during this time [15]. Teachers also had to adapt to new pedagogical approaches and teaching methods for which they had not been adequately prepared [16,17].…”

Determinants of Economical High School Students’ Attitudes toward Mobile Devices Use

“…A theoretical and empirical cross-country study involving Poland, Croatia, and Serbia [10,15,16] examined the advantages and disadvantages of e-learning during and after the COVID-19 period from the perspective of students and teachers. The study concluded that while there are disadvantages, students believe that the benefits of e-learning outweigh them.…”