Abstract:

In the spring 2020, routine of the full-time study process was turned upside-down at Riga Technical University (RTU) as both students and lecturers changed their daily habits right after spread of COVID-19. It seems clear already now that corona virus crisis is going to have a long term impact not only on labour market and other economic areas, but also on sustaining the education process. The role of the e-learning is going to grow in the future. Therefore, providers of an adult education have to find good balance between the students social integration dimension, with full-time studies, and the adaption to the changing environment. This is challenging time of consequent self-guided planning and implementation of the plans as everyone directly or indirectly involved in the education process must adapt and reorganize oneself to cope with the new conditions. Nor the RTU mathematics lecturers had a great choice where the only alternative to the e-learning would be not teaching at all. The lecturers themselves had to master new knowledge and skills. Authors of the article discuss improvement options of the academic staff professional skills at this extraordinary time as well as the methods applied by the lecturers of the Engineering Mathematics Department of the RTU during remote teaching process. The authors evaluate pros and cons of the distant learning, as well as analyse, which of the new skills and techniques would also be worth transferring to full-time education.

Keywords:

Distant learning, full-time education, improvement options of the academic staff professional skills.