Abstract:

The Covid-19 pandemic resulted in the Czech Republic in two extended lockdowns. The universities in CR were forced to move from face-to-face to remote learning from spring 2020 to summer 2021.

We provide a case study done during this period at the Faculty of Mechatronics, Informatics, and Interdisciplinary Studies. The faculty students were interviewed during the online periods to keep the university staff informed about the quality of the online lessons. During this period, students filled out four questionnaires related to all the faculty courses, focusing on the technical quality and the online teaching comprehensibility. The questionnaires were supplemented with interviews held with 50 students. This research focused on determining the best practices used by the teachers in the online lessons and identifying all the obstacles students faced in the remote periods.

The outcome of the interviews was distributed to the academic staff, and a list of recommended best practices was created.

To learn how the recommendation was taken into practice, the last feedback from students was done with a slight time interval in March 2022, after one semester of face-to-face teaching.

The dramatic modification of the educational process during a pandemic can be understood as a challenge and source of inspiration for future face-to-face learning. Therefore the last feedback also focused on identifying what new methodologies implemented during remote learning should continue in regular face-to-face teaching.

A corresponding survey was also performed with the lecturers. The outcomes of this research were again converted into a list of recommended best practices designated for our lecturers.

The main conclusion is that the long-lasting remote period significantly changed the level of acceptance of any electronic supporting lecturing systems. Adapting e-learning as a standard part of the educational process has increased dramatically both for the students and lecturers. This paper brings a generalized summary of our experience and recommendations applicable in all areas of future modern technical higher education.

Keywords:

e-learning, MOOC, CALL, remote teaching, Covid-19.