Distance learning experience at the department of management and educational technologies

According to the Resolution of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine “On Prevention of COVID-19 Coronavirus Dissemination in the Territory of Ukraine” of March 11, 2020, and on the basis of a number of legal acts, the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine issued an order on organizational measures to prevent COVID-19 Coronavirus Dissemination.

     Since March 12, 2020, working conditions have changed for all scientific-pedagogical staff and students of the faculty for humanities and pedagogics of the National University of Life and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine. The study of disciplines at the department of management and educational technologies (they are 28 in the department) is carried out for students by organizing an educational process using distance learning technologies, which does not involve attending educational institutions by their applicants, taking into account the systematic, scientific principle, as well as that of accessibility. Teaching staff use different approaches. Let's look at examples in more detail..

     Experienced Mentor, Assistant Professor Tamara Kovalchuk communicates with students on-line using the now popular Viber messenger, where she can talk, support students 'independent efforts, promote the health of group students, and send interesting materials for students' master's work. With the beginning of quarantine, Tamara Ivanivna sent materials of all lectures, presentations, creative tasks, a list of questions for preparation for tests and module control works by e-mail to the students of all her groups.

    Feedback from students was already in a couple of days. The author of the information portal created two electronic training courses in the disciplines "Pedagogy" (for students of the specialty "Technology of production and processing of animal products" of the faculty of animal husbandry and water resources and "Pedagogy and psychology" for students of the specialty "Ecology and environmental protection" of the faculty of plant protection, biotechnology and ecology.

For master’s students of correspondence form of study of specialty "Management of educational institution" for effective study of a course of discipline "Personnel management" professor Mykola Mykhailichenko has developed the tasks for systematization and generalization of knowledge and skills on problems of hiring workers in higher education institutions, higher education employees and registration of absence of the employee and payment during quarantine.

     Individual consultations were conducted for students on the norms of a number of important documents, namely: Laws of Ukraine “On vacations” and “On protection of the population against infectious diseases”, the current resolution of the CMU “On Prevention of COVID-19 Coronavirus Spread in Ukraine”, instructions on the procedure calculation of salaries of education workers. Future managers regularly use the KADROVIK.UA information portal.

     Since the beginning of February, future HR managers have been working with the electronic training course "Information Systems and Technologies in Personnel Management". Its author, associate professor Yaroslav Rudyk, tries to saturate the course not only with modern full-text information materials, but also with collections of video materials from webinars and seminars for HR managers, presentation materials reflecting the latest changes in the information support of personnel record-keeping, reviews of various software products, and in their variety the future graduate of the magistracy of the Master's program “Personnel Management” can easily be lost.

      Due to the beginning of the quarantine period, students finish to study the theoretical material of the course in order to start practical work in 2 weeks. 

     Most students work with laptops, but there are those who work only with smartphones. In the evening, students who need additional counseling can chat with the instructor via Skype.

     Professor Nina Zhuravska works with students through the e-learning toolkit on the Elearn information portal. She uses a forum to answer student questions and advice. Active communication through Viber and email is also ongoing. Studying at the courses of Nina Stanislavivna students of the faculty for humanities and pedagogics (specialty "Philology" - discipline "Theory and methodology of teaching" and "Pedagogy of higher education" - discipline "Methodology of teaching the cycle of agro-biological disciplines"), and the students of the faculty of law (the “law” specialty – discipline" Methodology and organization of scientific research with the basics of intellectual property").

      Assistant Professor Vasyl Bazelyuk and Assistant Serhiy Mykhniuk have developed corresponding e-learning courses and are daily engaged in providing their information content to ensure the distance learning of the educational material in the disciplines "Social insurance and pension provision", "System of organization and management of social services" and "Pedagogy."

 
     The courses "Social insurance and pension" and "System of organization and management of social services" are studied by students of CP-17001b specialty "Social work" who have accessed the course and perform the following types of work: review of lectures and supplementary materials, written independent work and ongoing testing.

      The discipline "Pedagogy" is studied by the 4th year students of the faculty of animal husbandry and aquatic bioresources. Communication with students is held byusing the “Message Menu” tool. In addition, students can discuss the study of the course materials in a blog of the same name, which each ENC has. 

     In order to respond promptly to students' questions or to the work of the instructor with e-courses (provided there is no possibility to work with a PC), the Moodle application was downloaded and installed on the personal gadget of the instructors.

     It is very useful to have such an application on a smartphone, as it is always at hand and gives the opportunity to respond promptly to students' requests, to modernize their work.

     As we can see, despite the quarantine, the scientific and pedagogical staff of the department of management and educational technologies of the faculty for humanities and pedagogics show their willingness and desire to help students master the future specialties in the educational programs "Personnel management" and "Management of the educational institution." Work continues with students from other faculties, finding opportunities every day and joining the courses of students who are farthest from Kyiv and have problems accessing the Internet in their homes. We hope that our distance learning experience will be useful to our colleagues.

     Today is the International Happiness Day. Everyone has their own happiness: from fighting for freedom and seeing their homeland free, up to –- to be close to the dearest ones, to see them healthy. Health is human's most precious treasure. Life safety is first and foremost. Happiness is when no one is killed and you don't hear sad statistics; when no one dies from a deadly infection; happiness – when all of humanity exhales with relief that a vaccine is found and the disease goes into oblivion!

     Happiness is when you are understood; when all your family is at the table on Christmas Eve, and when the Easter basket looks at the child; when you can enchant or sing Easter great songs; when girls will be able to go out to the meadows, in the Skansen area in the cities and lead a "crooked dance" or sing “vesnyanky” and “haivky”; when parents can take their children by the arms and go just to look at this activity or take a stroll, without pointing out every minute that it is dangerous; to see how young people are turning the birch tree or preparing a Kupala tree or a fire ...

     In the hustle and bustle of life, we forget about benevolence, attention, compassion, mercy, blaming one another for all non-existent sins… “Whoever is without sin, let him throw a stone at me!” We see chills in the neighbor's eye and do not notice the logs in our own… Let's start changing: to build palaces on our own land, not in worlds; build our own leisure infrastructure rather than travel to islands or the best resorts in the world; to invest in our hospitals, not to go to medical treatment abroad, because there may be a time that we will not go anywhere ... We forget about the transience of life, its irrevocability ... Let's change, gentlemen, together! Let's train our students and be rich and healthy.

Let everyone have their own, but such a welcome happiness! Let luck knock at the door of everyone and stay in there forever!

Serhiy Kubitskyi,
head of the department of management and educational technologies;
Tamara Kovalchuk and Yaroslav Rudyk,
associate professors, department of management and educational technologies