Abstract:

Modern educational technology in higher education is guided by the principles of the constructivist approach. Traditional teaching is replaced primarily by new models and strategies of learning and teaching in which students are at the center of the teaching process, while actively participating in educational work.

From the participants of the educational process, new information and communication technologies require lifelong education and training with special emphasis on digital literacy and communication in order to be able to successfully follow technological challenges and trends, which is reflected in the new and unexpected situation caused by coronavirus COVID-19. That is why the participants of the teaching process had to perform a series of operational interventions regarding the teaching process by implementing these changes in the teaching curricula with special emphasis on the course of teaching, consultations and exams, and defense of final and diploma theses that are carried out remotely in a virtual environment.

The paper presents the results of a study aimed at examining the attitudes and reflections on the application of educational technology as an important didactic-methodological factor of modern teaching on a sample of higher education teachers.

The study was conducted on a sample of 133 teachers employed at higher education institutions.

The study was conducted during the months of April, May and June 2020. A measuring instrument was compiled for the use in this study that consisted of three independent and 10 dependent variables. The measuring instrument was delivered to the respondents by e-mail.

The results of the study show that the influence of the interaction between the independent variables gender and age on the dependent variable average daily use of modern educational technology in higher education teaching is not statistically significant: F(4, 123) = .460, p = .765. The main impact of age was found to be statistically significant F(4, 123) = 1.631, p = .629, but this impact is small because Partial Eta Squared is only .050.

Furthermore, the study found, among other things, that 37.7% of respondents had completed an education program for conducting online classes and that 80.4% of them expressed interest in professional development in the field of application of modern educational technology in higher education teaching.

Keywords:

Teaching process, coronavirus, modern educational technology, higher education teaching, ICT.