Abstract:

Due to the global pandemic context, universities had to move rapidly from face-to-face learning to online learning. Online education has been seen as an effective solution for students to continue their learning process. But this transition created a number of challenges that higher education institutions had to face, especially in developing countries, due to a lack of prior training. It seems that developed countries have responded better to this situation, due to their ability to adjust the technological infrastructure for online education. The purpose of our article is to review the educational challenges in higher education during the pandemic. Some of the problems are: problems related to technology (poor internet connection, some software and hardware limitations), various psychological problems: lack of interaction of students with colleagues and teachers, substantial increase in the number of tasks and reduced time to solve them, challenges regarding the learning assessment (especially related to cheating prevention), problems with the cash flow for universities and the decrease in the number of students.

At the same time, the pandemic created some opportunities, such as forcing universities to modernize their technological infrastructure. In some situations, blended learning and flipped classroom were promoted. However, technology should not be seen as a panacea. In fact, we find that a paradigm shift in education is needed. It is time for teachers to rethink their role in the educational process, to be able to adapt to the diverse needs of students and to keep them permanently motivated. A remodeling of the educational process is required, in order to transform the challenges into opportunities, and to ensure a more flexible, active and efficient learning.

Keywords:

Higher education, educational challenges, pandemic context, active and efficient learning.