Abstract:

Education reforms can be observed in Latvia at all levels of education. There are changes both in the content of education and in the implementation of a new competence approach. The consequences of the pandemic in higher education will have to be recognized over several decades. Faced with the pandemic situation, a special task for the lecturers involved in the higher education study process was not merely to lose students, but also to maintain the quality of the study process. Assessing the quality of teaching has been a long-standing issue for higher education. Accessibility of learners, ensuring the content and quality of education, IT skills of educators and learners are just some of the challenges. It is important to look for the most productive ways and methods that could keep students’ attention in the distance learning mode and help them study, acquire competencies, and achieve learning outcomes.

The research aims to analyse the challenges students and lecturers have to overcome to achieve study excellence during distance learning and determine the most productive methods of its achievement. It is now evident that distance learning will become an integral part of studies even after a pandemic, so the views of students and lecturers need to be analysed to provide useful support. The study was conducted at the regional university in Latvia involving students enrolled in different level and specialization study programmes. The interviews were coded by employing NVivo 12 software. A thematic analysis of the interviews was undertaken using an iterative, inductive approach to the generation of codes and themes guided by the aims and objectives of the study.

Both lecturers and students acknowledge that achieving learning outcomes is a primary study goal. Students opinions divide as regards the questions about the extent to which they have an opportunity to get involved in the improvement of the study process. Some students state that their opinion is rarely asked, others admit that they successfully participate in the improvement of the study process. Analysing the examples provided by the students, it must be concluded that the involvement of students in the improvement of the study process depends on a particular lecturer, i.e. some of them are more successful, others are less successful. Students acknowledge that it is difficult to promote the excellence of the study process during distance learning, it is necessary to look for specific methods that work successfully in such conditions. Students think that a productive dialogue between a student and a lecturer is crucial in creating an excellent study process. They care for the studies which are more practice-oriented and for the lecturers who give more examples from life and more actively engage students via non-formal study methods.

Keywords:

Quality of study process, learning outcomes, teaching excellence.