Impact of Two Coronavirus Waves on Higher Education:

Abstract

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.