Abstract:

The worldwide pandemic connected with the virus COVID-19 has tested preparedness of the Slovak educational system for distance teaching to a large extent. This less applied way of education so far has also brought along negative impacts, and available innovative methodologies and teaching and learning materials have helped to alleviate them. This way of teaching required to apply new modern activating methods. Their application represented a challenge in teaching the subject of Dangerous Substances and Waste which is professionally focused on practice. The study programme Occupational Safety and Health, which includes this subject, prepares OSH managers for enterprises with wide-ranging focus. Besides traditional teaching and learning materials (textbooks, course literature), students work with real materials used by OSH managers in enterprises. One of them is the Safety Data Sheet for chemical substances. Activating methods were used to teach students how to work with these new materials, how to use and extract relevant information from the technical text, how to process the obtained information into clear form, having interesting design and bringing coherent specialised information for users in practice.
In teaching the subject of Dangerous Substances and Waste, we used problem and project methods together with brainstorming in online environment of IT technologies. The article deals with the way in which these methods were implemented in teaching practice and evaluate learning achievements recorded using the activating methods. Not all students were able to fulfil given tasks and assignments at the first time. Final evaluation was done through a colloquial performance and collective assessment. It proved that students had problems with differentiating essential information, and they also lacked connection with practice. Contrary, the activating methods confirmed justification of their use in the given subject. Online environment work pointed to the absence of mutual contacts among classmates.

Keywords:

Activating methods, chemical substances, distance education, practice.