Ukrainian way to provide education in pandemic

Tetiana Kostiuk,
Senior Research Fellow,
SRL of IHE, Borys Grinchenko Kyiv University,
Kyiv, Ukraine

Olha Vyhovska,
Head of SRL of IHE,
Borys Grinchenko Kyiv University,
Kyiv, Ukraine

The Сorona virus Covid-19 pandemic has significantly accelerated the transition of Ukrainian education systems to new teaching methods and tools. In particular, the quarantine restrictions in early spring 2020 brought long discussed problem of overall introducing of online learning to another qualitative level. Educators and teachers began to master actively various programs and platforms of distance learning both for group and individual forms of classes.

However, due to a number of circumstances, distance learning in Ukraine has made rather slow progress and its numerous shortcomings caused arguments among the participants of educational services market, as evidenced by a number of sociological studies on distance learning. The most critical point is considered to be reached just after a couple of months of distance learning, in May 2020, when a petition called “Prohibit distance learning in all educational institutions” was posted on the President of Ukraine website and got support of more than 25 thousand of votes[i].

Of course, intolerance became very weighty due to some incompetent administrative management and inexperienced users’ critics. However, it should be noted that the weakness of distance learning can be partially offset by functioning of a range of online educational platforms with good educational resources like “Prometheus”, “EdEra”, “iLearn” and others. The main philosophy in this case is who strives – obtains.

The platform of mass open online courses Prometheus is the first and largest free education project for everyone in Ukraine. Its goal is to make training courses from leading teachers, universities and organizations around the world accessible to all citizens.

EdEra is as well a virtual education studio that creates online courses, special projects, interactive textbooks, educational blogs, individual lessons, integration models and various plugging for online platforms.

The free WiseCow is a video lectures database designed to educate Ukrainians for free. The site is divided into topical sections (literature, cinema, art, music, journalism, theater, history, fashion and society), a map section “Cities” providing information of social initiatives in Ukraine and a poster of events.

VUM (Maidan Open University) is a distance platform for civic education which offers more than 30 topics for free learning.

iLearn is a free gamified platform with online training courses, tests and webinars for anyone who wish to study and has successfully passed the External Independent Assessment (so called ZNO).

The mastering of national language is possible with a help of one of 25 branches of online resource – Ukrainian Language Learning Platform. Its team is represented by more than 80 volunteer teachers and coordinators developing author’s methods of studying the Ukrainian language based at the best experience of various practices.

Thus, the Ukrainian educational online space has enough educational products placed on various online platforms helping to significantly improve the learning process. But the matter of fact is their quality and the price for the products and services on some of the platforms. It still makes the tasks for public administration of Ukraine, namely for the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine as well as for the Ministry of Digital transformation of Ukraine.

[i] URL: https://petition.president.gov.ua/petition/97016 (petition №22/097016-еп dated 25.05.2020).

Expert article 2940

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