Distance learning support: University's tradition

The challenges that the educational institutions were facing during the Covid-19 epidemic, lead to the upgrading of the university's distance-learning and distance-teaching approaches.

Our successful and swift adaptation to the changing needs was the result of the years-long deliberate implementation of new teaching approaches, especially the so-called flipped learning, where the students are provided with the learning materials in advance, before lectures, and they study the materials themselves first and only then discuss the topics in class. UNG had actually been using certain online-teaching methods years before the epidemic to enable a more successful inclusion of students athletes, students with special needs as well as of guest lecturers from abroad who could not come to UNG at a particular point of time. For more than a decade, also doctoral thesis argumentations, which PhD students must hold in order to proceed with and successfully complete their studies, have often been carried out in a distant mode.

Moreover, platforms such as Zoom, Big Blue Button, MiTeam and Moodle have also been used for a significant number of years to deliver lectures of guest lecturers, to record and store series of lectures and to carry out video conferences.