University education in Serbia during the COVID-19 pandemic - students’ perspective

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic forced the transition to online teaching and learning in Serbian higher education. Therefore, this paper studies the results achieved at Serbian universities during the Covid-19 pandemic. The methods used are the descriptive method together with the scaling technique and the Likert scale. The sample included 400 tertiary-level students from Serbia. The obtained results showed both advantages and disadvantages of online university teaching and learning during the pandemic from the students? perspective, which might contribute to the improvement of this mode of teaching. (SOUV). Factor analysis was applied to determine the main variables that were used for further statistical data processing: the manner in which lectures and tutorials were held, the predominant teaching platforms used, the mode of examination and students? academic achievements during the pandemic. The results proved that online teaching could not replace the traditional mode of teaching. Moreover, the results showed that the predominant teaching platforms used were Google Meet, Zoom and Google Classroom. The majority of the students claimed that the main advantage of taking examinations online was saving time and money, whreas its main disadvantage was technical issues that could impede the process of examination. Also, this research proved that studying in time of the pandemic stimulated their digital literacy. The fact that the respondents stated both advantages and disadvantages of virtual teaching may contribute to the improvement of this manner of teaching. Thus, this paper aims to stimulate future research that will provide an indepth analysis of tertiary-level teaching during the pandemic.