Higher Education Institutions in Ukraine during the Coronavirus, or COVID-19, Outbreak: New Challenges vs New Opportunities

Abstract

In a matter of weeks the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has changed students’ way of learning across the globe. These changes let us envisage how education can modify for better or otherwise for worse over the long term. COVID-19 2019/2020 has encouraged Higher Education Institutions in Ukraine to make innovative decisions in a relatively short period of time. To provide distance education in Ukrainian universities during the quarantine there have been introduced offline and online courses through various web servers, platforms, resources, and social media: Moodle, Zoom, Skype, Viber, Telegram, Messenger, Google-class etc. The summarized results of the questionnaire among Ukrainian students provided an opportunity to identify difficulties and benefits of introduced distance-learning. The sources to provide the information for this work included regulations issued by public authorities in Ukraine (Head of State, executive and legislative bodies) as well as directives to administrations of Ukrainian higher education institutions.