Abstract:

Major unexpected events (as recent pandenic) have disrupted many spheres of human-centred activities, including learning and teaching. A variety of stakeholders involved in the processes of education had to adapt from what was very human-centred interaction to new interaction models: from students in primary and secondary schools, their parents, teachers, to students and lecturers in higher education. Some of much-needed experiences of interaction like collaborative learning, teamwork, or daily exchange of best practices have been replaced with online classes and sessions intended for information exchange. Two types of student groups were especially confronted with issues: students in the last year of their high-school education preparing for final examinations and students who just entered higher education. Both groups were struggling, but had different challenges to face, from relying more on self-dependent learning to adapting to online studying processes at higher education institutions. Teachers and lecturers also had to rethink and redesign their approaches, while sharing the uncertainty of conditions impacting their teaching perspective.

Returning to classrooms/lecture rooms, does not mean that experiences gained should be abandoned; just the opposite. Now, in post-pandemic but still somewhat uncertain environments rethinking and redesigning teaching methods and techniques is required once again. Digital teaching materials and paradigms of interaction can complement traditional approaches to exchanging contents, collaboration models supplement team work, onsite sessions can be broadcasted and shared across geographically distributed learning communities. In that sense, experiences gained and skills acquired enable teachers and students to find a right balance in combining positive effects of working in different environment to achieve better results.

This paper aims of adding to this perspective by presenting an example of good practice with students of the Signals and Systems course, in the second year of undergraduate studies in Electrical Engineering and Mechatronics at University North, demonstrating the importance of greater flexibility in rethinking and redesigning learning and teaching methods.

Keywords:

Online teaching, post-pandemic, methods, collaboration.