Abstract:

From the end of February 2022, large-scale warfare began in Ukraine during the eight-year war with Russia. During active military operations on a wide front, both the teachers of universities and students faced numerous difficulties and dangers. The teachers of National Technical University of Ukraine “Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute” could complete the second semester of the 2021/22 academic year successfully. This was facilitated by the active work of teachers which conduct lectures by Zoom or Google Meet, provide asynchronous personalized training, monitor students in e-communication mode and try their best not to lose students in the war chaos. As a result of this work, a group of teachers of the Educational and Scientific Publishing and Printing Institute of Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute (educational programs - "Advertising and Public Relations", "Publishing and Editing") developed recommendations for adapting teaching methods in crisis situations.

The data for the study were: the teachers' own observations, student comments on the tasks, usage statistics from the online courses located on Google Classroom and platform for e-learning “Sikorsky” (the speed of students' task completion, the subject of creative works), selective survey of students which was conducted in order to clarify the results. In total, data from 8 subjects were processed and 228 students were covered.

The following trends were observed:
1. Two types of assignments: tests and essays were being complete faster than other assignment types. The main reason was that these assignment types can be completed easier from technology perspective considering the problems of unstable connection, power cut, etc.
2. First of all, students performed those tasks that correspond to their psychological state. Students noted that writing essay gave them an opportunity to "talk" psychologically, which reduced the level of worrying uncertainty.
3. In most cases during the completion of assignments without specified topic, students used the topic of war.
Based on these trends, the following recommendations for times of crisis have been developed:
1. Adapt educational tasks so that they require the student to use no more than one or two software products, since students are forced to do work mostly on a smartphone and switching between programs makes work difficult.
2. To introduce more personalized creative tasks into educational practice so that students can learn and psychologically "unload".
3. Encourage students to rethink traditional journalistic and communication knowledge and practices in the context of their implementation during crisis times, for example, during the war.
4. To support students psychologically, to remind them that studying hard "here and now" is the part of their struggle against the aggressor.

These recommendations can be useful to teachers for ensuring the process of higher education for those universities, students or territories that are in crisis circumstances.

The war in Ukraine is not a sentence for its undergraduate education. The task of teachers is to observe and notice trends, adapt educational tasks to crisis conditions and personalize them in the mode of asynchronous learning.

Keywords:

Adapting the teaching methods, crisis, test, essay, advertising, public relations, journalism, student well-being.