Abstract:

Dynamic changes in the world around us, announced for several years, currently are becoming even more rapid and unpredictable. The strong need to create new jobs and the observation of the growing demand for new professional skills and, at the same time, the decreasing demand for old jobs related to traditional ‘industrial’ jobs are predicting fundamental and unprecedented changes in the world of Industry 4.0 (Future of Jobs, WEF Report, 2020). These trends are associated with genuinely imminent challenges at all levels of education (Schools of the Future, WEF Report, 2020), especially for higher education, whose main task is to educate future specialists. The competences that future university graduates should have, have changed dynamically in recent years (European Principles for Enhancement of Learning & Teaching Project EFFECT, 2017) and there is already a strong need to change educational paradigms.

Distance education caused by 2020 the COVID-19 pandemic requires the use of ICT at all levels of education and sharply demonstrates the gap between the traditional ‘chalk and blackboard’ style of teaching and the ‘digital’ style of working with students, which was caused by a necessity to use ICT. It can be seen that new technologies create a completely different, from a cognitive point of view, learning style and organization of the learning process.

In this article I would like to present the current results of my long-term research on innovative methods of developing the educational competences of beginning academic teachers. The main results of the research are based on observations of participants’ experiences in practicing both styles of the didactical process: ‘face-to-face’ and ‘online’. Methodological aspects of the project and examples of good practice will also be considered.

Keywords:

Higher education, educational competences of academic teachers, quality of higher education.