Abstract:

One of the fundamental standards in today's higher education area is to encourage students to take an active role in creating their learning process (Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area ESG 2015, EUA). The student-centred teaching shall be the main style of didactic work of today’s academic teacher. However, from the perspective of academic teacher, focusing on developing innovative methods of organizing the process of teaching which enable university students to learn effectively, towards fulfilling demands of their study and future professional life, shall be supported by a detailed diagnosis of university students' experiences and attitudes, concerning their own process of learning, which were accompanying them during their past education, especially at the secondary school.

In my long-term research on developing the educational competences of beginning academic teachers, I found as extremely necessary to recognize university students' individual customs and styles of learning. This knowledge may give academic teacher an opportunity to be helpful to university students in creating their own paths of developing their knowledge, skills and personal/social competences. This recognizing of students’ ‘learning attitudes’ is also an important point of departure for building interactions between students and teachers which have a strongly positive impact on the process of study.

In this article I would like to present the current results of my long-term research in the area of beginning university students' self-reflections on their own process of learning. I will discuss opinions of university students, gathered in the period of remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic and also currently, during 'face-to-face' working with students. This analysis will be immersed in the context of applying its results in my work with beginning academic teachers in a frame of postgraduate studies in the field of 'IT competences of an academic teacher'.

Keywords:

Higher education, didactic competences of academic teachers, process of learning at university level.