Strengthening of e-learning at the leading Ukrainian pedagogical universities in the time of COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

Distance education has become the mandatory component of higher education establishments all over the world including Ukraine regarding COVID-19 lockdown and intentions of Universities to render valuable knowledge and provide safe educational experience for students. The present study aimed to explore the student’s and academic staff’s attitude towards e-learning and the most complicated challenges regarding online learning and distance education. Our findings disclosed that the online learning using Zoom, Moodle, Google Meet, BigBlueButton and Cisco has become quite popular among the students and academic staff in Ukraine in time of the lockdown period and beyond. Based on the Principal Component Analysis data processing we can conclude that students’ satisfaction and positive e-learning perception are in a good correlation with quality of e-learning resources and set of apps which are used while e-learning and distance education. Also, education style, methods, and manner predict willingness of students to self-study. The self-motivation, time-management, lack of practice, digital alienation, positive attitude towards ICT, and instruction strategy belong to the most important challenges of COVID-19 lockdown based on the students and academic staff interviews. Online learning on daily purpose should be used in the favor of strengthening of classical higher education rather than replacing the former. Blended education is the best alternative to face-to-face education, because the communication with mentor in a live environmental even virtual should have ushered the learners to complete online learning and improve its results.