A year of education during the pandemic
A year of education during the pandemic
On March 10, 2020, the authorities announced the closure of all educational institutions in Romania, March 11, 2020 marking the beginning of a challenging period for the entire education system. All the learning organizations had to close their doors, transfer courses online, some throughout the entire year, others alternating with hybrid education for different periods, depending on the restrictions imposed by the epidemiological situation.
The last year has brought for the stakeholders from schools and universities “on the fly” reorganization of the operational processes, the educational tools and resources, the pedagogical methods and, last but not least, of the interaction between teachers, students and colleagues.
The rector of Politehnica University Timișoara, associate professor eng. Florin Drăgan, Ph.D., admits that the transition to online education meant a paradigm shift in education: “In the end, I think we have to take the positive side of things, in the sense that we have adapted, this year. For us, at Politehnica University Timișoara, it was easier, because we had a fairly well-developed system, I mean the e-Learning Center and the Virtual Campus, which carried out online activities before the pandemic. Teaching staff who did not teach in the remote learning system only had to adapt their courses to an already existing platform, we did not have to develop a system from scratch. From this point of view, it meant that the teachers had the necessary software tools at their disposal. We have expanded a lot in this area. We started conducting more and more, and finally all, exams in the online system. The only inconvenience remains the application area, in some cases, where there are more complex installations, for which it was more difficult to record the laboratory work”.
In the last year there has been a major increase in the resources used for online education in the Virtual Campus of UPT, necessary equipment for online activity has been purchased, digital tools have been developed, including by students, but also open online courses through the e-Learning Center.
Regarding what follows, for this year, the UPT leadership proposed to the Senate flexible methodologies, which left the faculties free to organize the courses in a hybrid education system or to remain in the online system. Most faculties have chosen, so far, to stay online. Following the consultations with the students for each measure adopted, the faculties scheduled the application activities in hybrid system, in small groups, especially for the students of the first years or with those of the final years, for the preparation of the license or the dissertation.
For the future, UPT plans to equip some of the amphitheaters with a high-performance video camera system that will adapt to the movement of the teacher. In this way, students can choose, in the case of courses, even after returning to normal, whether they participate physically or online. In fact, there has been a much higher attendance at courses since they switched to their online version. In terms of admission, last year UPT came up with a premiere - admission based on an educational portfolio - which will continue this year.
One year after the beginning of the “social distancing” of education, during the 24th edition of the Together Online webinars, organized by the e-Learning Center - the rectors of the four big universities in Timișoara, together with the general school inspector from Timiș discussed the experiences of a year of pandemic education and answered questions in an interactive session, also posted on UPT's Facebook page.
