Abstract:

Before 2020, online education rarely played a significant role in educational strategies of universities. Online courses were quite exceptional and factually non-existing at lower levels of schools. When the COVID-19 pandemic locked them down, they faced a shock because they have virtually no experience and had to improvise. This learned them about the importance of online education. Still, they often see this mode as a replacement for classroom education only. As a result, their educational practices are not always coordinated and are rarely subjects of any cross-institutional standardization.

For years, the authors participated in online teaching and learning at the sole Slovak university with a long-term strategy of this sort. Every course has its online partner and all students can select between its online and on-site format. Such education has been demanding due to its necessity to develop and to perform both "soft" and "hard" teaching methodologies and practices. At the same time, in times of the pandemic they proved their value.

In our contribution, we outline a strategy, which can be used for reaching a similar goal. We point to a variety of factors: the organization of the work, design and development of courses, staff development, teachers’ personality, their knowledge, specific skills and expected experience. It guarantees the sustainability of top-quality teaching and learning.

The key stages in designing and developing it are:
• Acceptance of the strategic importance of massive online education,
• Transformation of learning objectives and creation of supportive digital content,
• Staff development and in-service teacher training,
• Development of virtual classrooms, laboratories and courses
• Execution of courses and quality control,
• Sustainable development of online methodology and its practices.

The stages must be coordinated and implemented across the institution. Only then they will form an optimal environment in which everyone can orient him/herself and lose a minimum time by guessing what to do, when and how. Such Virtual University must be equally well-defined as the real one is.

Our philosophy of the virtual university is based on Stracke’s principles of Open Education (Stracke, 2018):
1. Learners cannot be forced to learn but can only learn by themselves.
2. Learners have to explore and create their own knowledge, skills, and competences.
3. Educators should not be teachers but facilitators of these self-directed learning processes.

Then, we will present how these principles can be incorporated into the real online courses, what activities have to teachers and students perform to reach the top quality of teaching and learning online.

References:
[1] Ch. M. Stracke, “Quality Frameworks and Learning Design for Open Education”, IRRODL, vol. 20, no. 2, pp. 180-203, Apr. 2019

Keywords:

Online education, University's educational strategy, Virtual classroom, Virtual university.