E-learning formula in higher education
In the first part of the article, e-learning definitions were characterized, and a short historical outline of e-learning in Poland was also presented. The following sections show the forms that are used in e-learning teaching. The disadvantages and advantages of teaching in the e-learning formula were further illustrated. Author presented the research on students’ opinions in e-learning education. At the end of the article, the aspect of implementing an e-learning form for traditional teaching has been discussed as an effective method of acquiring knowledge.

Osoby starsze w społeczeństwie informacyjnym. E-learning jako szansa na przeciwdziałanie cyfrowej marginalizacji seniorów
Społeczeństwo informacyjne charakteryzuje szybki rozwój nowoczesnych technologii. Skutkuje to koniecznością użytkowania coraz to nowszych urządzeń. Szczególnie dla osób starszych trudne jest podążanie za nowościami. Dlatego niezbędne jest całożyciowe dokształcanie się i podnoszenie swoich kompetencji, które zapobiegną cyfrowemu wykluczeniu seniorów. Uniwersytety Trzeciego Wieku oraz organizacje pozarządowe mają w swojej ofercie przedmioty, które wspomagają słuchaczy w odnalezieniu się we współczesnym, starzejącym się społeczeństwie. Szansą na nową formę edukacyjną, która może przeciwdziałać wykluczeniu seniorów, jest e-learning.

Innowacyjne metody nauczania w pracy ze studentami nauk społecznych – wybrane aplikacje mobilne
Celem artykułu jest scharakteryzowanie pozycji aplikacji mobilnych i ich możliwości w nauczaniu w szkole wyższej na kierunkach społecznych. Temat wykorzystania zarówno smartfonów, jak i aplikacji mobilnych nie jest jeszcze mocno eksplorowany w literaturze polskiej. Brakuje całościowych, większych badań i dopiero z dłuższej perspektywy będzie można ocenić ich użyteczność i efekty tak pozytywne, jak i negatywne zaangażowania tej technologii w zajęcia. Obecnie wydaje się, że jest to narzędzie atrakcyjne zwłaszcza dla studentów – ponieważ pozwala im na funkcjonowanie w znajomym środowisku i posługiwanie się narzędziami, które są dla nich łatwe w obsłudze. Mobil – learning(m-learning) to nowocześniejsza formuła e-learningu, która może z nim współgrać i uzupełniać jego możliwości. Rozwój technologii informacyjnej i możliwość wykorzystania w trakcie zajęć ze studentami aplikacji mobilnych jest interesującą alternatywą dla tradycyjnych form edukacyjnych. Angażując obie strony procesu dydaktycznego, pozwala się słuchaczom na duży margines swobody. Tworzenie własnych zasobów, kreatywny sposób aranżacji treści, zadaniowość stwarzają płaszczyznę dla innowacyjnego nauczania. Spełnia się tym samym postulat nowoczesnego multisensorycznego, syntetycznego, mniej stresotwórczego i wspierającego uczenia. Jest to jeszcze ciągle w sferze eksperymentu, zbierania doświadczeń, aktywnej obserwacji, chociaż zainteresowanie ze strony studentów pozwala na stwierdzenie, że jest to właściwy kierunek rozwoju dydaktyki szkoły wyższej.

The research presented in the article seems to confirm the assumption that e-learning and ICT development contribute to the quality of educational services, to the development of information society competences and to the increased competitiveness of institutions of science and education. E-learning participants aim at: increasing comfort in the scientific and educational process; lifelong learning goals; the personalization of education; the formation of new scientific and educational cooperation and intercultural competence; self-fulfilment in education and work; increased openness of the scientific and educational environment; and enhancing self-organizational effects which support the sustainable development of the university environment. The research was conducted at the University of Silesia within the framework of IRNet project.

Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) is a revolution in education. As learner, teacher presence and teaching method no longer depend upon time and distance, class enrolment also becomes open for more of the populace regardless of educational background. The goal of the research is to design a learning model that is in accordance with dimensions that are compatible with the MOOC rules. Literature review, a questionnaire, and interviews were used to define dimensions based on the MOOC rules. The research resulted in a model that is in accordance with MOOC categories and dimensions based on input from both users and developers.

Changes in the quality of academic education in the time of the COVID-19 pandemic

Through the first period of the coronavirus pandemic, and in the need to teach remotely the education system in Poland underwent the accelerated process of implementation of distance learning solutions. The task that universities set themselves in the era of the prevailing pandemic was to maintain the quality of education at the existing level, while ensuring the safety of students and lecturers. The main aim of the study is to illustrate the changes in the academic education process that occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic. This article highlights the specific features of distance learning, pointing to its positive and negative sides. To achieve the assumed goal, a query of domestic and foreign literature in the field of the presented research issues was used, as well as an analysis of secondary sources of information, mainly reports on remote education research during the pandemic. The analyzes show that the forced transfer of education to virtual platforms brought some benefits, but also resulted in a number of unfavorable changes. The educational experience so far during the pandemic has shown that the transfer of this form of verification of learning outcomes to cyberspace posed serious problems - not so much for students, but for teachers. Remote education offers hope for matching teaching techniques to the needs of students, as well as for forcing lecturers to improve the quality of their classes, also in terms of content. Distance learning techniques are therefore becoming an integral part of the education process. The issues discussed in the article may constitute a starting point for further in-depth research.

The main goal of the text is to collect conclusions from the experiences of educators and researchers with regard to various aspects of distance learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. Conclusions were collected on the basis of the author’s own experience and the selected source literature. The article consists of two parts: “Conclusions from Polish literature” and “Conclusions from foreign literature”. As the article presents mainly the Polish perspective, the first part is significantly longer than the second one. Part One deals with such issues as: the model of distance learning, the time of pandemic as a crisis situation, priorities in distance education in conditions of isolation, the issue of isolation, and some principles of assessment, among others. The university e-learning platform was also discussed as an example. Part Two addresses such issues as: seven lessons from the pandemic, effectiveness of online testing, psychological aspects regarding a student and a teacher, and augmented reality in distance education during COVID-19.

Due to social distancing measures imposed by the COVID-19 epidemic, universities all over the world have predominantly moved to online teaching and e-learning. In order to investigate the effectiveness of the current e-learning course, the qualitative online-survey study was carried out to assemble data on students’ perceptions. In this article we present the result of empirical research in Indonesia during pandemic. The research focused on the e-learning tools, encountered obstacles, physical problems, and preferable learning methods. The outcomes gained in the research can be provided to the constitutional agencies, educational institutions, and other participants to expand the progression of e-learning.

The article presents knowledge about the modified e-learning on-line synchronous teaching of digital systems, which took place in the period of widespread closure of schools during almost the entire school year 2020/2021 at a secondary school with an IT focus. The importance of teaching digital systems in computer science and the integration of teaching into available lessons is briefly clarified. Furthermore, the content of teaching is presented, including its modification by elements of programming by DCBLP discourse and links to existing knowledge about this use from previous years. The subject of research interest will be the specific effects of changes on students’ opinions regarding the content of the subject. For this purpose, a qualitative investigation based on the design of the grounded theory will be used. The work brings partial knowledge that can serve as additional material for the determination of other research questions, hypotheses and identification of potential problems in teaching. The results show the pupils’ interest in the digital systems enriched by the programming discourse reveals the possible perception of a long time distance learning in this area.

The aim of this research is to analyze anxiety, knowledge, and belief toward e-learning acceptance, especially by science teachers in high schools in Aceh, Indonesia. About 117 teachers were randomly selected for this study. A questionnaire was used to collect data, and analyzed using the Likert scale. The results indicate that most teachers view the use of e-learning in teaching science to be positive. Despite the fact that only half of them are knowledgeable in the use of media and have concerns about some negative effects of e-learning on students, they still believed in the usefulness of e-learning in science education. Hence, more related research is recommended to further corroborate the findings of this study.

At work, distance learning methods have been compared in Silesian University of Technology in Gliwice (Poland) and Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in Seoul (South Korea). The results of the empirical research among the academic teachers and students conducted in both universities are similar: distance learning is not satisfying for both groups and it is not effective.

Educational on-line games are promising for new generations of students who are grown up digital. The new generations of students are technology savvy and spend lots of time on the web and on social networks. Based on an exploratory study, this article investigates the factors that influence students’ willingness to participate in serious games for teaching/learning. This study investigates the relationship between students’ behavior on Facebook, Facebook games, and their attitude toward educational on-line games. The results of the study reveal that the early adopters of educational games are likely to be students, who are young, have only a few Facebook connections, who currently play Facebook game(s). Furthermore, the study emphasizes that there may be differences between students coming from various countries.

The arrival of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) has brought about intense methodological restructuring in the participating countries. These changes, along with the development of ICT, are reshaping the Higher Education system. The emergence of advanced technological tools like the Moodle platform has altered the teaching-learning process at every educational cycle. This paper springs from the work undertaken as part of the ongoing project for Educational Excellence in collaboration with three Andalusia universities: Seville, Cadiz and Huelva. The study was entitled Tele-education Platforms for Virtual Instruction. Since work at the University of Huelva has taken into consideration the students at some point, and the University of Córdoba lacks research on this area, we decided to examine the role of the student at the University of Cordoba as side-work to the original project. To this purpose, we designed an instrument to determine the students’ rate of use, level of satisfaction and level of knowledge of the Moodle platform. Thus, with this paper we would like to emphasize the relevance of students as key elements in the education system, as recipients of the teaching process.

While discussion on faculty development in China has been increasing in recent years, our understanding of the strategy for the development remains limited. This study with a survey aimed to examine whether e-learning could meet faculty members’ expectations for their professional development. Our findings suggest that e-learning is identified as a preferred means of opening new opportunities to meet the needs of faculty in China where faculty development still remains traditional training and it has bright prospects. The result also highlights individual perspectives as a critical factor shaping e-learning behavior, and provides implications for the policy of faculty development.

The paper presents research results of the two-year pedagogical experiment comparing test scores in three subjects (Database Systems, Management, IT English) taught either in the ICT-supported way, or in the traditional face-to-face way at the Faculty of Informatics and Management, University of Hradec Kralove, Czech Republic. The main research objective was to find out whether ICT contribute to increasing learners’ knowledge and consequently to forming key competences. Didactic tests as the main tool were used within the pedagogical experiment which followed the “pre-test - instruction - post-test - post-test2” structure. The research sample included 687 respondents. Obtained results proved there were no statistically significant differences in learners’ knowledge in both approaches to instruction. The results were discussed from two important points of view: (1) teachers’ and learners’ ability to use the potential of ICT in teaching/learning and (2) the role of teaching/learning styles in the ICT-supported instruction.

The main scientific focus of the paper is the new pedagogical knowledge about the educational activities content and organization for the development of future teachers’ communicative competence, together with the new aspects of educational communication, implemented in the modern information environment. The paper describes the approach to students’ communicative competence development based on the use of educational blogs. During the research students solved professional pedagogical problems, described and discussed their experience in blogs. For each of the problem solved, students had a specially developed activity algorithm. The algorithm structure described teachers’ and students’ actions, additional electronic resources, stages of monitoring activities, terms of effectiveness, as well as extracurricular activities assessment scale.

The presented paper describes the characteristics of a study conducted on Synchronous Virtual Classrooms (SVCs), virtual spaces which harbour such resources as videoconferences, shared desk-tops, etc. The main objective of the research was to assess teaching and methodological, communication and technological aspects of SVCs in e-learning processes. Empirical methodology of quantitative and descriptive nature was used; a questionnaire was designed to assess these issues with a sample of 116 university students from six different fields of study at the University of Extremadura. As a conclusion, we report that SVCs with a constructive methodology enhance students’ creativity, favour virtual collaborative work, promote critical and independent thought, and create alternative channels to stimulate students’ active participation by means of flexible and attractive interfaces.

The article is an attempt to identify the tendencies displayed by university teachers towards the adoption of e-learning solutions in the academic environment. The paper is divided into four main sections. Section one explains the theoretical assumptions behind remote education and the role of the university teacher, with behavioral component being considered the core element. Section two describes the research methodology and defines the original research tool used to measure the scale of concrete actions taken by university teachers in their embrace of e-learning. On the basis of the analysis of the results, the importance of further education of academic staff for the improvement of the quality of education was demonstrated, regardless of the place of residence or professed values. The concluding section sums up the findings and puts forward recommendations for higher-education institutions in the area of remote education in the academic environment.

The take & make method in performative education. Case study

The article is a report on the research carried out in a group of pedagogy students on the use of the take&make performative method in the subject of comparative pedagogy. The aim of the research was to learn about the experiences of pedagogy students regarding the implementation of an optional performative task within the subject of comparative pedagogy. During the research the case study method was used. The technique used in the study was the technique of analyzing documents, in this case entries on a didactic forum on an e-learning platform – their content and available information on entries, such as the date of entry and the average grade of the student entering the registration. The main strategy for data analysis was qualitative analysis and the complementary strategy was quantitative analysis. The qualitative analysis covers the nature of the responses to correctly completed tasks – the type of action undertaken by the students and its creative or imitative nature, as well as the strategies undertaken by students who failed the task. The quantitative analysis covered the number of submitted works, the number of passed works (performative solutions) and failed works (non-performative solutions), their correlation with the average grade for compulsory tasks and the time of submitting the work. The article points to the need to use performative methods in education that mobilize students to act, not only to plan their own actions.

The article considers the advantages and disadvantages of implementing distance learning for medical students’ training in quarantine. The issues of using e-learning methods in distance learning have been analysed. In the teaching methodology, the questions of determining the feasibility, advantages and disadvantages of implementing distance learning in the educational space and distinguishing between the concepts of “distance learning” and “e-learning” appear. The term “e-learning” is often interpreted as synonymous with “distance learning”, but the authors of this article note that this is not entirely correct. E-learning is only one of the forms used in combination with other forms of learning. Distance learning at the modern level involves the implementation of the educational process only by the network. Distance learning is a method of attending class even if students cannot be there physically. According to the Regulation “On distance learning” in Poltava State Medical University, “distance learning is a set of educational services provided through modern psychological, pedagogical, information and communication technologies”. The purpose of distance learning at the university is to introduce modern information and communication technologies to train the specialists at the educational and qualification levels “bachelor” and “master”, training programmes for interns, and advanced training of doctors according to national educational standards. The article analyses the modern pedagogical research of Ukrainian and foreign schools and presents the results of the analysis of students’ and teachers’ opinions on the introduction of distance learning in the educational process. The article also presents the results of implementing distance education at the Poltava State Medical University in the disciplines “Medical Physics” and “Medical Informatics”. The result of the study proved that distance learning has only advantages theoretically. In practice, many problems need to be solved.