PRESENTER: Aune VALK
University of Tartu started with the promotion of e-learning opportunities over 20 years ago. First educational technologist to support teachers was hired in 2000. E-learning has never been an obligation for teachers but always an opportunity that can be used to enrich and support learning in classical research university. Currently there is team of five instructional designers and five academic developers and their role has been crucial in turning university to the fully e-learning mode overnight when covid-19 hit the whole world as well as the university. Face to face learning as many other activities were cancelled in Estonia by the government desicion on 12th of March. Now we can compare what happened in e-learning in the 20 years before that and in 2 months after that date
Some numbers. Before 13th of March 70% of courses of the University were blended courses having at least part of the activities taking place in e-environment. During last 2 months additional 10% of courses got e-support. When there are usually 1500 videolectures made per year then during last 2 months 2350 videolectures were recorded. But biggest jump was made in the field of videoseminars that was rather new activity until the end of 2019. In December 2019 we had ca 100 videoseminar rooms available then now it is almost 2000. Around 1/3 of courses in Spring semester opened room for videoseminar.
Biggest problem we faced during the Corona-semester is overload of students. Many teachers gave lot of tasks for individual work not exactly calculating working load. Students struggled with the loads of work and decreasing motivation while studying home alone. Current challenges are related to e-exams and using technical solutions for detecting possible fraud while following all data protection rules. Regarding continuing education then e-learning has played there a big role already for years. Last year 40% of programmes and 48% of learners in continuing education studied in e-format. While during last two months face to face courses have been cancelled or moved to e-environment then some e-courses became extremely popular in Spring 2020.
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