The challenges posed by the Covid-19 epidemic to the educational process were and continue to be enormous. Metamorphosis Foundation, within the project Open Educational Resources, supported by the Foundation Open Society-Macedonia (FOSM), conducted research on the state of online teaching, focused on primary schools in our country. The purpose of this research was to determine the conditions and challenges of online teaching in elementary schools in RNM in the period March – June 2020, and through empirical knowledge to give relevant recommendations for improving the situation and addressing the identified challenges.
Some of the key findings presented in the Report are:
- Almost half of the participants (44.5%) reported that they use their own laptop at school for business purposes. 84.9% of the teaching staff use private email addresses for official communication. This is problematic from many aspects, especially from the aspect of protection of personal data of students, who during elementary education are minors.
- Almost one-third of the teaching staff (31.6%) stated that they have internet access at school only on their mobile phone. Unfortunately, there are also locations where schools do not offer any internet access
- In many families with more children of school age, the problem was the “sharing” of technical aids (laptop, computer), i.e. the situation usually required only one of the students to be able to attend live classes
- Almost all participants in the research (88.9%) agree that in order to successfully implement effective online teaching, the usual methods in the teaching process need to be changed.
- A significant number (30%) believe that a better variant of “one platform for all” would be if schools had some freedom in choosing the platforms and software through which online teaching will be conducted for their students.
- 45% of the respondents agree with the position “There is a satisfactory representation of materials in all languages in which teaching is conducted”, while 70% of the teachers who teach in another language (other than Macedonian), do not agree with this position
- Regarding textbooks and other educational resources, almost all participants (93.9%) agree with the position that successful online teaching requires full or partial adaptation of textbooks.
The full research report can be found here.
—————————————————
17 September 2020