The first wave of the coronavirus pandemic caused the largest disruption of education systems
in the history of mankind. All schools and education institutions were forced to shift their
education processes from face-to-face to online forms. Some of them had better conditions
and more experienced staff for this transition, some of them had to start to create appropriate
conditions both for teachers and students. Subsequently, numerous studies and analyses on the
impact of the coronavirus pandemic on education have been done worldwide. The paper deals
with a specific research question of how schools and education institutions used their experiences
from the first wave of COVID-19 pandemic to ensure sustainable quality of education under the
pandemic conditions. In this comparative study the authors present the findings resulted from
two questionnaire surveys. The study has been processed with a focus on three areas: the quality of
teaching, technical equipment used by students and students’ opinions and experiences with online
forms of education, and influence of the home schooling (microclimate of the home environment)
on student’s education. In the paper the authors present and discuss in more detail the first area,
i.e. they analyse how experiences from the first wave of the pandemic were used to eliminate the
negative impact on education and to provide adequate quality of education.
Author : Miroslav Šebo
How students perceive educational support through Facebook
Since the beginning of the 21stcentury social media has expanded world-wide in all aspects of human
lives. Mainly for the youth they have been a natural part of their “digital ecosystem”. As the results of the surveys of social media use by teens, carried by the Pew Research Centre, showed, in 2014 in the USA 71 % of teens reported being Facebook users and no other platform was used by a clear majority of the interviewed. In 2018, three further online platforms, other than Facebook, have been reported by the significant majority of the teens. These were YouTube, Instagram and Snapchat. As to Facebook, “only” 51 % of the respondents stated to be Facebook users. Furthermore, smartphone ownership has become a ubiquitous element of teen life. Up to 95 % of teens have reported they have a smartphone or access to one, and 45 % of teens have proclaimed they are online on a near-constant basis. Even more important, they are becoming more and more used, in the time of the world-wide corona pandemic and the need for connection in social quarantine.
As for teachers and their opinions on social media, on the one hand they are aware of their usefulness as regards to sharing information or organizing school tasks. But on the other hand, they identify social media as a reason for the pupils and students` low attention during classes at school. But since the youth devote a lot of time to social media, there is no point of not using these means also in education, as shown by the current efforts to organize education processes during the corona pandemic.
At the Faculty of Education, Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra, we have been aware of the significance of the social media in relation to different aspects of education and pedagogical communication. That is why for several years, attention has been paid to this new education phenomenon. The paper presents the authors experiences with the use of Facebook as a mean of support for education while the main focus is given to the results of a questionnaire survey which examined students` opinions and attitudes towards Facebook (before the pandemic situation), in comparison with Moodle, as a new phenomenon in university education.