Quality assurance of teaching and learning process in economic higher education under the pandemic

Abstract

Long-lasting pandemic uncovered the new challenge of tertiary education: how to ensure the high quality of durable emergency distance learning and enable the students to master the necessary competences. The objective of this research was to test the application of the bottom-up approach to quality assurance when students, as stakeholders, are enabled to influence content and context of their learning through regular surveys. Current research represents the comparative analysis of two surveys, conducted at the end of spring semester of 2019-2020 academic year (593 respondents), and at the end of autumn semester of 2020-2021 academic year (1193 respondents) among the students of the Faculty of Economics of Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, outlining the problems students faced while the emergency remote learning was conducted during the first lockdown and measuring how these problems were fixed during the second shutdown bearing in mind the results of the first survey. The methodology combined quantitative and qualitative research methods. The current research covers the study of the methods of teaching, the level of communication between learners and educators, the level of practical skills acquisition, engagement of students in the learning process during two semesters. Also it analyses the measures undertaken by the teachers and faculty management to achieve improvement in learners’ feedback during the second survey that can be considered as best practices.