Abstract:

Organizational image is a set of perceptions, feelings, ideas, and opinions about an educational service or the organization that provides it (Gioia, Hamilton & Patvardhan, 2014; Whetten, 2006). In a rapidly technologically changing world, all educational institutions create their online image. The school transforms, refines, evaluates, and implements new strategies for creating, improving, and disseminating school image as it adapts to the lightning-fast changes in the educational environment during the pandemic. In developing its image, the school must be open, creative, using all external and internal cooperation networks and other resources to improve the quality of teaching and learning, and actively communicating with all the groups or institutions involved in the educational process (Targamadze, 2017). The school image consists of three parts: the subjective image created and seen by the school administration, the experiences and relationships of children and teachers, and the external image seen by parents and society. The impression of an educational organization is not necessarily the same for all these actors involved in online image creation. How the online image of a school is created under quarantine conditions is a new and scientifically under-researched topic.

To fill this gap, our study asks the following questions:
- What determines the school's online image?
- How and by what means is the school's online image shaped during the Covid-19 lockdown?

The results of the study show that secondary school online image construction is a dynamic process. During the quarantine, the construction of an online image was not a priority activity for the school administration and teachers. Although the image of a secondary school is considered by most of the participants to be a significant factor in choosing a learning institution, during the Covid-19 lockdown it was very important for educational organizations to make information available online quickly. As a result, school leaders and teachers were often unable to give maximum attention to the visual design of the information provided, which led to a poorer external school image as seen by parents. Meanwhile, parents had more time during the Covid-19 lockdown to observe changes in the school's online image. During this period, an increase in news traffic on the school's website was observed. However, the increase in news traffic had only a small impact on the informativeness of the comprehensive school website. Research participants pointed to the importance of the news feed not only on the school's website, but also on Facebook, and linked this to the online image of the school. The study continues the discussion on how the school's online image is created and provided practical suggestions for school leaders, teachers, and other stakeholders.

Keywords:

Covid-19 lockdown, school image management, school online image, school website.