Abstract:

COVID-19 pandemic has left 87% of the world’s student population affected by school closures (data source: UNESCO). Nevertheless that the educational establishments managed to develop relevant strategies for re-opening, the system underwent a number of changes.

Several forms of teaching prevailed: face-to-face (F2F) classes, distance learning, hybrid, and mixed teaching (part of students attend F2F classes, the rest learn online). To get higher results, distance learning, as well as hybrid and mixed teaching need more investments for the purpose of acquiring digital, pedagogical, social, and emotional competence.

Much of research work has been carried out in this field, but the information concerning the challenges and specific strategies used by students for coping with problems is still insufficient. To avoid school closing down and student dropping off regarding different social and ethnic groups, the educational institutions recommend the usage of distance learning programs, as well as open educational applications and platforms to schools and teachers for continuing the teaching process distantly, thus preventing eventual school termination. These circumstances provoke further changes within the educational systems concerning teacher’s role, competence, and development on the one side, and on the other side, the reconsideration of the teaching methods in depth. The transition from F2F classes to distance learning is difficult in fact, for both the students and teachers. Yet more complicated appeared the road of the mixed teaching. In such a situation, the teacher makes efforts to keep and stimulate students’ interest and attention both for F2F and online learning, but at the same time, the educational level is to aim at high scores.

The goal of this paper is to analyze the results achieved in the course of teaching students involved in different forms of education. The questionnaire introduced to secondary school students will answer the query of which topics should be preferred by the different forms of teaching. The analysis of the current results will give an answer to the question of which form of teaching contributes to gaining a higher level of subject comprehension. This research unveils some important and interesting findings related to students’ attitude to the different forms of teaching. Further, it prompts teachers how to keep students’ attention considering the condition that they are often provoked by students to discuss topics apart from the current theme. Besides, teachers get suggestions for coping with technical problems concerning the software product used for their lessons, and for ways of overcoming the confronted difficulties.

Keywords:

COVID-19, face-to-face classes, distance learning, hybrid and mixed teaching.