Universities in times of war: Challenges and solutions for ensuring the educational process

Abstract

Educational activities of higher education institutions located in the war zone are undergoing significant changes, particularly in Ukraine. This study aims to generalize the experience of the National University “Zaporizhzhia Polytechnic,” Ukraine, in ensuring the continuity of the digital services of the educational process and generate recommendations for countering threats arising under the influence of active hostilities.49% of students are residents of Zaporizhzhia, and 40% live in the occupied territories. Most students were forced to move to safer locations or even abroad. Still, some of them remained in the occupation (due to the strict regime by the occupiers, they could not move to the territory controlled by Ukraine). About 5% of students temporarily or entirely stopped their studies. The city of Zaporizhzhia is under constant fire from the occupying forces, so academic staff is dynamically relocating to safer regions. The university constantly responds to the situation at the front and implements measures to continue educational activities in these conditions, relying on digital services. To minimize the impact of war threats and ensure the continuity of digital services, the university administration guarantees protection against power outages of all elements of the digital infrastructure, providing backup Internet communication channels and creating a distributed information base. National University “Zaporizhzhia Polytechnic” continues to further expand its information services library, improving the quality of the educational process in war conditions.

Inclusion at Ukrainian universities: a view from the inside

“…Nevertheless, it is essential to emphasize that, despite these slight differences, the overall assessment of inclusivity remains relatively consistent among various staff groups regardless of such factors as professional role, experience working in universities, experience working with students with disabilities, and identi cation with representatives of a vulnerable group. Such unexpected research results may be a consequence of the transformative processes in the higher education system that are occurring due to the ongoing war in Ukraine [5,21,52]. Given the challenges universities face, ensuring an inclusive environment is one of the effective approaches to ensuring the continuity of the higher education system.…”

Specifics and Perspectives of the Third Mission of the Medical University: a Survey

“…Of course, analysing the social activity of the medical university in general and during the war in particular, one should not overlook such important aspects of the implementation of the third mission of the medical university as treatment and rehabilitation of the wounded, psychological assistance to military personnel and members of their families. The performance of this function is important in the context of maintaining the social stability of the region and the country in particular, which is going through a difficult period of its history (Chala et al, accessed on Dec 2023;Greshta et al, 2023). Activities to support the needs of the armed forces of Ukraine on the part of VNMU are constantly developing, medical specialists of various specialties are involved to support the physical and mental health of armed forces representatives.…”

Coverage of the Russian armed aggression against Ukraine in scientific works: Bibliometric analysis

“…Dahl East Ukrainian National University and Donetsk National Technical University, which had to change their location twice (Porkuian et al, 2023;Zakharova & Prodanova, 2023); institutions in Chernihiv and Sumy, which worked during terrorist missile bombings and encirclement (Novomlynets et al, 2023;Nifatova et al, 2023;Karpusha et al, 2023); the resistance of the capital's university, which was at the epicenter of terrorist missile attacks several times (Bugrov et al, 2023); aid and volunteering of universities located hundreds of kilometers from the front line (Nestulya et al, 2023;Kaplenko et al, 2023;Tsos et al, 2023); online learning projects acquired during the COVID-restrictions and even more important in wartime (Kuzheliev et al, 2023;Kvyetnyy et al, 2023;Greshta et al, 2023); organizing the work of a scientific library in the front-line Dnipro (Kolesnykova, 2023); acquired by scientists during emigration and continuation of scientific research (Polishchuk et al, 2023), etc. In the article by Petrushenko et al (2023) from this special edition, a bibliometric analysis of publications on the management of higher education institutions in wartime conditions is presented, in which the lack of conceptual studies devoted to the role of universities in the war and post-war reconstruction of the State of Ukraine is noted.…”