Teaching and Examination Process of Some University Courses before vs during the Corona Crisis

Abstract

The newly emerged corona crisis in our country, but also much broader - on the entire planet, caused by the pandemic scale of COVID-19 virus, dictated the need for adjustment of the teaching and examination process of many university courses. At our institution, Faculty of Computer Science and Engineering (FCSE) in Skopje, starting from March 17, 2020, until today (March 2021), classes and exams are completely realized through distance learning systems, i.e. using the BigBlueButton video conferencing system, implemented in the Courses and Exams student services - the official FCSE websites on the Moodle e-learning platform. For all faculty courses, lectures, auditory and laboratory exercises, colloquia and exams, all take place via a video conferencing system for distance education. In this paper we present a comparative analysis of the conduction of some courses at FCSE in classical conditions, as opposed to the conditions with distance education. We have considered the analysis mainly from the aspect of the approach to teaching, as well as from the aspect of exam conduction and achieved exam results. The analysis of those aspects leads us to conclusions about several positive and negative sides that we noticed in distance education compared to the classical conditions of classes and exams. Our findings also may apply on the organization of online contests, especially in informatics.