Abstract:

As a result of the COVID 19 pandemic, educational institutions around the world have shifted from face-to-face to distance learning, posing new challenges for teachers and students. In many countries, this change happened overnight. Our research aims to explore the difficulties encountered in teaching university students. We used a quantitative research method to compare the responses of two different groups. One group was examined before the outbreak of the Covid epidemic (N=50) during the face-to face teaching, and the other group (N=70) during the pandemic They entirely learned in the online space. We formed two hypotheses in our study. The first hypothesis assumed that students who participated in distance education had more difficulty in finding relevant literature. Statistical analyses showed no significant difference between the two groups, so the first hypothesis was rejected. The results suggest that students who participated in distance education did not have more difficulty in obtaining relevant literature, than those who attended face-to-face classes. Instructors had to adapt lesson plans to the online environment very quickly. So, our second hypothesis assumed that distance education students had more difficulty with the teacher’s lecture style than face-to-face students. Although statistical tests revealed a significant difference between the two groups (p=0.01), we found a surprising result. The opposite of our hypotheses was confirmed. The data suggest that students who attended face-to-face classes had more problems with the lecturing style of the instructor, than students who attended online classes. Statistical analyses did not prove that the group of distance learners had more problems with the lecturing style of the instructor, than the group of face-to-face learners, so our second hypothesis was rejected. Given the small study sample we cannot draw general conclusions, it is possible that other samples will have different results.

The results of our research show that the transition to full distance learning did not cause more problems for students. They were able to obtain the relevant literature for their studies. This is obviously also due to the fact that the teachers also tried to provide more materials and resources to the students. Students were also more satisfied with the lecturing style of the teachers, than during the face-to-face sessions. This fact indicates that teachers have been flexible enough to adapt to the changed forms of education.

Keywords:

Impact of COVID-19, face-to-face teaching, distance learning, identifying student problems.