Abstract:

The Romanian education system faced a sudden change in March 2020, when the state authorities decided to rapidly switch to online teaching, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. One year after this measure was taken, we reflect on the effects produced by moving teaching activities to a virtual classroom. This paper aims to identify and analyse the positive and negative aspects of the virtual learning environment for history classes, as well as their implications on the design of the educational process, and on the teaching-learning-assessment cycle. Despite the similarities, there are notable differences between the classical teaching-learning model and the one that teachers and students arrived at, in practice, while trying to come up with working solutions for online learning. The paper presents examples of secondary education history teaching and learning practices that started being used or became more prevalent during the pandemic, which were identified through a series of semi-structured interviews with secondary school history teachers and students from Prahova County, Romania. Based on these same interviews, a teaching-learning model that more accurately matches the realities of teaching history online was elaborated and compared to the pre-pandemic offline model. The paper also discusses the medium- and long-term impact of the new teaching methods within the framework of the blended and hybrid education models anticipated to be adopted in the future. Conclusions are drawn on the changing behaviour of students within the virtual environment and the challenges encountered by history teachers in adapting to new teaching methods.

Keywords:

teaching history, online teaching methods, COVID-19, teaching-learning-assessment cycle