Online Teaching and COVID-19 era: Positive Experience Regarding Health-Education and Psychological Competencies of Education Students in the Context of Global Burden

Abstract

The aim of this study was to estimate the level of knowledge, health-education and psychological competencies of education students regarding COVID-19 circumstances and to determine whether they can be improved if the teaching and facilitated discussions were delivered in a virtual way, employing online learning platform Microsoft Teams. The sample was composed of 43 participants, who were thought crucial topics essential for improving their knowledge and competences related to the most common infectious diseases (chain of infection, the concepts of epidemics/pandemics, prevention) and mental health (resilience, readiness to face various challenges). Wilcoxon‘s rank test revealed a statistically significant difference in all three subsets – knowledge segment, health-education competencies and psychological competencies. The magnitude of the impact was 0.6, 0.57 and 0.45 respectively, which is considered to be of great influence. The results demonstrated that online teaching during the pandemic was successful in the context of the acquired knowledge and competences.